Pope Francis on Saturday updated a 2019 church law aimed at holding Catholic hierarchs accountable for covering up cases of sex abuse, expanding the norms to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirming that vulnerable adults can also be victims of abuse when they are unable to consent.
Francis reaffirmed and made permanent the temporary provisions of the 2019 law that were passed in a moment of crisis for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy. That law had been praised at the time for laying out precise mechanisms to investigate complicit bishops and religious superiors, but its implementation has been uneven and the Vatican has been criticized by abuse survivors for continued lack of transparency about the cases.
