ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has issued an apostolic letter which modifies Church law in the area of dismissal from religious institutes, particularly in the context of clerical abuse.
The letter, published Tuesday and entitled Recognitum Librum IV, modifies a sentence from canon 695 of the Code of Canon Law which has to do with dismissals from religious institutes.
The new text of canon 695 with the newly added sections in bold reads:
A religious must be dismissed from the institute for the delicts mentioned in can. 1395, 1397, and 1398, unless in the delicts mentioned in can. 1395 §2-3 and 1398 §1, the superior decides that dismissal is not completely necessary and that correction of the religious, restitution of justice, and reparation of scandal can be resolved sufficiently in another way.
In his letter published in L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis explained that the change was brought about to make canon 695 consistent with previous revisions of Book VI of penal law, which lists and classifies crimes against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue.
In the new version of Book VI, which was published last year, canon 1395 §2-3 refer to sexual crimes committed in public or by force or abuse of authority and canon 1398 §1 deals with clerical abuse of minors and the use of pornographic images of minors.
The modification ensures that canon 695 now refers to the appropriate sections and crimes of the revised Book VI, which came into force on December 8, 2021.
The revisions to Book VI were first commissioned by Pope Benedict XVI with a view to make penal sanctions for sexual crimes more efficient.
This had become necessary in the context of the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. The reforms also introduced new crimes in other areas, including in economic and financial matters.
Back in 2021, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said that there had been an overemphasis on mercy in the previous penal law which had “fed a climate of excessive laxity in the application of criminal law” in the Church.
His sentiments were then shared by Msgr. Markus Graulich, the council’s undersecretary, who said that these changes to Church law were necessary because “in many places, punishments were mentioned only as a possibility, and the whole text gave the impression that it was almost merciless to apply punishments.”