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Redraft canonical crimes as crimes against the child

IICSA · The Roman Catholic Church Investigation Report · Issued 10 November 2020 · Addressed to: Catholic Bishops Conference

Government responseNo response yet

DeliveryNo statement from Catholic Bishops Conference found

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation, C

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales should request that the Holy See redraft the canonical crimes relating to child sexual abuse as crimes against the child.

IICSA, The Roman Catholic Church Investigation Report · 10 Nov 2020 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported in October 2022 that the Catholic Council for the Inquiry confirmed in September 2021 that revised canonical penal legislation would come into force on 8 December 2021 (The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Oct 2022). The inquiry recorded in October 2022 that the council accepted the recommendation and asked the Holy See to redraft canonical crimes, framing child sexual abuse as an offence against human dignity rather than clerical obligations (The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Oct 2022).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Government response

●No formal government response recorded

The Index has not yet recorded a verbatim government response to this recommendation.

Delivery

No statement on delivery from Catholic Bishops Conference has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.

What other bodies have found

In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.

●Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse · 20 Oct 2022

On 7 May 2021, the Catholic Council for the Inquiry stated that it accepts and supports this recommendation and has written to the Holy See making a request to this effect. The Vatican has responded that this will be included in the revision of Book VI of the 1983 CIC, which is currently in process. In the revised Book VI of the 1983 CIC, crimes against minors are considered under a different title than crimes against the obligations of celibacy on the part of clerics. The revised title will be “Crimes against the life, dignity and freedom of man” and will include a canon that is specific to crimes against minors. On 30 September 2021, the Catholic Council for the Inquiry confirmed that the newly developed legislative text will come into force in the Universal Church on 8 December 2021. The new text now determines the penal norms, unlike the text before, in order to give precise and sure guidance to those who must apply them. In addition, the offence of child abuse is now framed not within the offences against the special obligations of clerics, but as an offence committed against the dignity of the human person.

From: Recommendations - Roman Catholic Church investigation report

Site note: These are the Inquiry's own words, from its recommendations page for the Roman Catholic Church investigation report, captured by the Internet Archive on 20 October 2022. They are the Inquiry's account of what the body told it, not the body's own words.

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The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.