Zero Tolerance and Transparency
Title: Pope Leo XIV and transparency in child sexual abuse cases
Author: Kieran Tapsell
Publisher: UCANews
Date: 12NOV2025
In an address to the National Safeguarding Conference held in the Philippines from Oct. 20-24, Pope Leo stated that “there can be no tolerance for any form of abuse in the Church.”
At the same time, he had a meeting with board members of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA Global), which has been advocating a “zero tolerance” policy for child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
The pope acknowledged that there was some “resistance in some parts of the world” to zero tolerance. What he did not mention was that most of the resistance comes from his own dicasteries.
The usual meaning of “zero tolerance” is the imposition of the law’s maximum penalty for any breach, irrespective of the circumstances. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, in its 2017 Final Report,stated that the appropriate punishment for clergy found guilty of child sexual abuse is dismissal from the priesthood, and for non-ordained religious, expulsion from the religious institute.
A slightly watered-down form of zero tolerance has been canon law for the United States since 2002. It requires permanent removal from ministry in every case. That has been the definition of zero tolerance adopted by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in its 2024 Universal Guidelines for bishops’ conference protocols. These guidelines do not impose zero tolerance, even with that definition, despite its claim to do so. The guidelines recognise that under canon law, the Dicastery for the Congregation of the Faith ultimately decides the appropriate punishment, not individual bishops or bishops’ conferences.
There are many impositions of zero tolerance in the Church’s 1983 Code of Canon Law. There is automatic excommunication for assaulting the pope (Canon 1370), apostasy, heresy and schism (Canon 1364), procuring an abortion (Canon 1379), throwing away the Holy Eucharist (Canon 1382), absolving one’s accomplice for a sexual sin (Canon 1384), attempting to ordain a woman (Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela 2010 Art 5, 1°) and directly violating the seal of confession (Canon 1386). Canon 694 §1 provides that members of religious institutes are “ipso facto dismissed” if they marry or attempt to marry. Secular clergy who wish to marry in the Church are also required to be “laicised,” the canonical term for dismissal. No exceptions. That’s zero tolerance.
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