Pope adds married couples, Church movement reps to Vatican’s laity and family office

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, personal secretary of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, speaks to EWTN Rome Bureau Chief Andreas Thonhauser. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Vatican City, Feb 14, 2022 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
Editor’s note: In a Feb. 11 interview in Rome, A… […]

Vatican City, May 9, 2019 / 04:01 am (CNA).- New Vatican norms for the Church’s handling of sex abuse, issued Thursday, place seminarians and religious coerced into sexual activity through the misuse of authority in the same criminal category as abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

The norms also establish obligatory reporting for clerics and religious, require that every diocese has a mechanism for reporting abuse, and put the metropolitan archbishop in charge of investigations of accusations against suffragan bishops.

Pope Francis promulgated the law May 9 via a motu proprio, titled, “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”). He approved its promulgation on an experimental basis for a period of three years. It will enter in effect June 1, 2019.

“The crimes of sexual abuse offend Our Lord, cause physical, psychological and spiritual damage to the victims and harm the community of the faithful,” the pope wrote, stating that the primary responsibility for improving the handling of these issues falls to the bishop, though it concerns all who have ministries in the Church or “serve the Christian People.”

“Therefore, it is good that procedures be universally adopted to prevent and combat these crimes that betray the trust of the faithful,” he said.

The norms regard what are called, in canon law, “delicts against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue,” consisting of sexual acts with a minor or vulnerable person; forcing someone to perform or submit to sexual acts through violence, threat, or abuse of authority; and the production or possession of child pornography.

The new law also concerns any actions intended to cover-up a civil or canonical investigation into accusations of child pornography use, sexual abuse of minors, or sexual coercion through abuse of power.

It establishes the so-called “metropolitan model” for the investigation of accusations against bishops and their equivalents, as proposed by Cardinal Blase Cupich at the November meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican February summit on the protection of minors.

According to the new law, the metropolitan archbishop will conduct the investigation into a suffragan bishop with a mandate from the Holy See. The metropolitan is required to send reports to the Holy See on the progress of the investigation every 30 days and to complete the investigation within 90 days unless granted an extension.

The metropolitan archbishop may use the assistance of qualified laypeople in carrying out the investigation, though it is primarily his responsibility, the norms state. Bishops’ conferences may establish funds to support these investigations.

The document emphasizes that “the person under investigation enjoys the presumption of innocence.”

At the conclusion of the investigation, the results are sent to the competent Vatican dicastery, which will then apply the applicable penalty according to existing canon law.

In the event a report concerns a major archbishop, it will be forwarded to the Holy See.

One article states that Church authorities shall be committed to ensuring “that those who state that they have been harmed, together with their families, are to be treated with dignity and respect,” be welcomed, listened to, and supported, offered spiritual assistance, and medical and psychological assistance.

The norms also introduce obligatory reporting, requiring that every cleric or religious man or woman who has become aware of an accusation of abuse or cover-up report it “promptly” to the proper church authority.

The ‘motu proprio’ also states that it will be required that every diocese create a stable mechanism or system through which people may submit reports of abuse or its cover-up. The exact form of the system, which could also be an entire office, will be left to the discretion of the individual diocese, but must be established by June 2020.

“Even if so much has already been accomplished, we must continue to learn from the bitter lessons of the past, looking with hope towards the future,” Pope Francis wrote.

“In order that these phenomena, in all their forms, never happen again, a continuous and profound conversion of hearts is needed,” he said, “attested by concrete and effective actions that involve everyone in the Church.”

“This becomes possible only with the grace of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, as we must always keep in mind the words of Jesus: ‘Apart from me you can do nothing.’”

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Statue of St. Peter in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jul 15, 2024 / 12:45 pm (CNA).

The Vatican has said that two women have been hired for the specialized maintenance crew of St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time in its 500-year history.

While women have worked for the Fabbrica di San Pietro — the department that oversees maintenance, restoration, and repairs of the Vatican’s papal basilica — before, it is the first time women are officially part of the “Sanpietrini” maintenance staff, according to Vatican News.

Two teams of Sanpietrini “work simultaneously on a daily basis to fulfill their principal tasks of reception, stewardship, cleaning, and maintenance of the Vatican Basilica and its facilities respectively,” the basilica’s website says.

The two Italian women, 21 and 26 years of age, studied masonry and decorative and ornamental plastering at the basilica’s newly relaunched School of Fine Arts and Traditional Trades.

The Vatican basilica’s art and trades school started in 2022 to train up new laborers in artisanal artistic skills. The courses and room and board are offered to students without cost.

Father Enzo Fortunato, communications director for St. Peter’s Basilica, said the presence of women in the Fabbrica is not entirely new — there were women mosaic artists who worked in the Vatican’s mosaic studio for many years — but their entrance in the Sanpietrini corps is a novelty.

According to Vatican News, in the 1500s, some women and orphans who inherited family businesses from their deceased husbands or fathers were also employed by the Fabbrica under the same conditions as the deceased, male breadwinner.

In the past 500 years, other women in the artistic trades were also hired by the Fabbrica, which was founded with the laying of the foundation stone of St. Peter’s Basilica on April 18, 1506. 

The maintenance crew takes its name from “sanpietrini,” also spelled “sampietrini,” the Italian name for the small, square stones that pave St. Peter’s Square and other historic streets in the center of Rome. 

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