In more than 40 years of covering news of the Catholic Church, I have never encountered a Vatican story as wild as this one, nor one that is potentially—I stress, potentially—as revealing about the way the Vatican actually works.
First bear in mind that this story involves the sex-abuse scandal: an issue on which any sensible Catholic prelate by now recognizes the importance of getting things right; an issue on which Pope Francis has repeatedly promised transparency and accountability. And yet:
- A powerful Vatican dicastery overturned the sentence imposed by two ecclesiastical tribunals on a priest accused of abuse.
- But that dicastery had no authority to overturn the sentence, no role at all in the Church’s judicial process.
- Yet the diocese in which the priest had worked accepted that statement as authoritative. Until…
- Another powerful Vatican dicastery—the one that is responsible for disciplinary handling of sex-abuse cases—announced that the previous Vatican statement was null and void, and the sentence by the ecclesiastical tribunals, removing the accused priest from clerical status, stands.
Have we heard the end of this story? Not likely. Will we ever hear the whole truth about it? Still less likely. Which is why I say that the case is only potentially revealing.
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