Vatican's anti-paedophilia guide

2010-04-10 08:57

Vatican City - The Vatican will soon publish on its website guidelines for fighting paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church, the ANSA news agency reported on Friday, citing Vatican sources.

The guidelines will likely be published on Monday and will appear on a page dedicated to sex abuse cases, along with the letter Pope Benedict XVI wrote to Irish Catholics on the matter last month.

The Vatican was not immediately available for comment on the matter on Friday.

The handling of sex abuse cases in the Church is regulated by the 2001 canon law known as "motu proprio".

The decree was written by Benedict's predecessor John Paul II to deal with "serious crimes" within the Church and was based on a document written by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The decree urges bishops to inform the Vatican on cases of paedophile priests in their dioceses, who should be immediately moved away from youths.

In recent months, large-scale paedophilia scandals rocked the Catholic Church in a number of countries, including Ireland, Austria, the United States and the pope's native Germany.

Senior clerics were accused of protecting guilty clergy by moving them to other parishes -- where they sometimes offended again -- instead of handing them over to authorities to be tried.

The 82-year-old pontiff has himself faced allegations that as a cardinal he headed the Vatican's watchdog for morals and doctrinal issues, and earlier as the archbishop of Munich, he failed to take action against predator priests.

- SAPA