Rights of accused priests still take priority over rights of accusers:
Latest from the Vatican on reporting accusations of child sexual abuse
Dr Michael Leahy has submitted the following article for publication. It explores some current issues around the reporting of Child Sexual Abuse. A review of Michael’s self-published book, Descending into Hell and Rising Again was printed in the Winter edition of The Swag.
In September 2024 a Letter of the Vatican Dicastery for Interpreting Sacred Texts repeated the church’s teaching that publication of the identity of priests accused, but not yet convicted by church or civil courts of paedophilia is an offence against charity. Even dead priests, the Letter asserts, are entitled to their good name until the courts find otherwise.
‘Transparency’ and ‘the right to know’, according to this teaching, are not justifications for publishing such names and details before judicial resolution of the cases. Clearly, the media would be covered by this ban. The exposure by the Australian media of so many such accusations that the Federal government established a Royal Commission into them would thus count as egregious offences against charity.
But there is nothing in the Letter to suggest that the ban would not also extend to others, even to victims. Since the priest who abused me never faced judicial proceedings of any kind, and is now dead, my publication of the details of my abuse in my recent book Descending into Hell and Rising Again (Leahy, M.T. 2025, self-published) would also violate this ban.
To the twenty-first century mind, it beggars belief that the Catholic church could persist in such a ban. This is the institution in whose structures a Royal Commission found ‘systemic’ causes of clerical child sexual abuse.
Despite these findings, and evidence of similar failings in the church throughout the world, the church persists in beginning its consideration of the legitimacy of publishing details of such accusations with an account of the rights of the accused priests: their rights under the principles of the ‘presumption of innocence’ and the ‘non-retroactivity of guilt’. The teaching – even in September 2024 – gives no consideration at all to the rights of their accusers!
The priority given by this teaching to the rights of the accused priests over those of their accusers is perhaps attributable to the teaching’s origins during the 19th century liberal assaults on the rights of the church in Europe. During that period false criminal accusations against priests were made as pretexts for expelling them from some countries.
However, persistence in this prioritisation in the 21st century in the light of the worldwide child sexual abuse scandal is an inexcusable failure by the church to adapt its teaching to the signs of the times. As a serious victim of abuse by a priest, the glaring failures that I see with this teaching are the following.
First, the Letter grounds this teaching in the demand of charity, yet it offers no account of the gospel norm of charity. Instead, it treats this defining feature of the Christian life as a simple moral precept.
No genuine understanding of the gospel norm of charity could countenance the rights of shepherds accused of sexual predation on their lambs over the rights of those lambs. The teaching of the church as expressed in the 2024 Letter, written in the light of a worldwide abuse crisis, is, however, impervious to the claims of those lambs even to the right to tell their stories.
Second, in denying that right, the teaching persists in ignoring the need and right of victims to the therapeutic relief of finally being able to tell their story and have it believed.
Third, the Letter’s use of the ground of charity to support its disqualification of the claims of ‘transparency’ trivialises the value of transparency. It is not just the reputations of the accused priests that are at stake here but also the trustworthiness of the authorities charged with preserving the unity of their communities. Transparency and the right to know are not just dubious rights claims from hostile liberal societies. They are rather the values whose observance enables their communities to continuously assess the trustworthiness of those who govern them.
Fourth, the church’s ban is so obviously self-serving that it is laughable. The only ones to benefit from its enforcement are the accused priests. Since the dead ones are no longer in a position to enjoy its benefits, the benefits would pass rather to the institution in whose names they ministered.
Fifth, the church itself acknowledges the ban’s unenforceability when a source document for the teaching – Pope Francis’ ‘Points for Reflection’ – calls for ‘collaboration with all persons of good will and with workers in the mass media to enable recognition and discernment of true from false cases, accusations from calumnies, avoiding rancour and insinuations, hearsay and defamation’ (n. 11). Such collaboration would be unnecessary if the ban were enforceable. Indeed, there is a touch of hypocrisy in insisting on the maintenance of the ban while at the same time urging collaboration with the efforts of those media attempting to circumvent it.
The inescapable conclusion of this assessment of the current teaching of the church on the legitimacy of publishing the identity, accusations and supporting evidence against priests/religious accused of child sexual abuse is that it is at best outdated, at present self-serving, and at odds with any tenable understanding of both the meaning of Christian charity according to the New Testament, and of the ethical implications of that meaning for the Christian community.
