New Vatican Guidance Urges Clergy To Report Cases Of Sexual Abuse

The Vatican on Wednesday published a handbook for clergy and church lawyers that lays out the steps to follow when investigating and reporting alleged cases of sexual abuse of minors and others by priests, deacons and prelates.A Vatican official described the "vademecum," as is titled in Latin, as simply a "tool" for correctly conducting probes into such allegations."No new law is being promulgated, nor are new norms being issued," Cardinal Louis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the in the in-house outlet . "It is, instead, an 'instruction manual' that intends to help whoever has to deal with concrete cases from the beginning to the end."The new document does not condition such reporting on whether it is legally required. The Vatican's , an entity founded as part of the 15th-century Roman Inquisition to suppress heresy which now defends church doctrine, issued the set of new guidelines to be followed in cases of clergy accused of sexual abuse.