Pope Francis and zero tolerance of child sexual abuse

Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has publicly claimed eight times that the Catholic Church practises “zero tolerance” towards child sexual abuse by clergy. At worst, this is simply untrue, and at best, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, he makes the expression mean whatever he wants it to mean.

The term “zero tolerance” was first used in the United States in 1972 by politicians pushing for tougher criminal laws. Merriam Webster defines it as “a policy of giving the most severe punishment possible to every person who commits a crime.” It has its critics because it does not take into account that offences may vary in their seriousness, and the circumstances of the offender might justify a lesser sentence. Despite civil law jurisdictions adopting this principle of proportionality, there is often zero tolerance in practice for certain kinds of crimes. Drink-driving causing death will attract a jail term. The Australian Government is introducing mandatory sentences for hate crimes.

In an address in 2002, Pope John Paul II said: “there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young”.

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in its 2017 Final Report, quoted these words when it said that the appropriate punishment for child sexual abuse was dismissal from the priesthood and expulsion from a religious community. That is zero tolerance because they are the maximum penalties under canon law.

Under canon law, only the Pope or his delegate can dismiss a priest from the clerical state. On 17 January 2014, Pope Francis’ representative, Archbishop Tomasi, told the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child that since 2005, the Holy See had dismissed only 25% of the 3400 priests against whom credible allegations of child sexual abuse had been made. That’s 75% tolerance, not zero. Despite Pope Francis’s calls for transparency, we do not have statistics for dismissals since 2014 because he has not published them.

In 2014, Archbishop Coleridge of Brisbane told the Australian Royal Commission that he had sent applications for dismissal to the Vatican in respect of six priests who had been convicted by the state’s courts of sexual abuse offences. The Vatican rejected five out of the six applications for dismissal. That is 83% tolerance, not zero.