Pope Leo’s Call For Transparency
Title: Pope Leo’s call for transparency and evidence destruction
Author: Kieran Tapsell
Publisher: Catholic Outlook
Date: 11th NOV 2026
Pope Leo XIV said on June 21 that there should be no tolerance in the Catholic Church for any form of abuse — sexual, spiritual, or abuse of authority — and called for “transparent processes” to foster a culture of prevention throughout the church.
But Canon 489 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law is inconsistent with that call.
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in its 2017 Final Report found that the victims of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church took 33 years on average to talk about their abuse.
The Commission outlined “the ways in which the issue of record retention is critical to responding to delayed disclosure of child sexual abuse.” It recommended that institutions should allow for this delayed disclosure by retaining records relating to child sexual abuse “for at least 45 years.” The Church’s canon law is inconsistent with that recommendation.
Canon 489 §2 of canon law states:
Each year, documents of criminal cases in matters of morals, in which the accused parties have died or ten years have elapsed from the condemnatory sentence, are to be destroyed. A brief summary of what occurred along with the text of the definitive sentence is to be retained.
The Royal Commission recommended amending canon law to remove this requirement.
What Canon 489 requires
In common law legal systems, a third-party summary of a trial is not evidence of what occurred in civil or criminal proceedings because of hearsay rules. The documentary evidence in a case, such as the signed statements of witnesses and relevant records, is known in canon law as “the acts”.
Such documentary evidence is often admissible in common law systems even when the witness has died or cannot be found. These are the documents that must be destroyed under Canon 489.
In 2019, Pope Francis abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse. That did not affect Canon 489. Pope Francis specifically retained what he called “office confidentiality” in other parts of the Code. The Holy See in its 2020 response to the Royal Commission did not accept the Commission’s recommendation to reform Canon 489. It remains in force.
For full article visit:
https://catholicoutlook.org/pope-leos-call-for-transparency-and-evidence-destruction/