By Phil Lawler
In more than 40 years of covering news of the Catholic Church, I have never encountered a Vatican story as wild as this one, nor one that is potentially—I stress, potentially—as revealing about the way the Vatican actually works.
First bear in mind that this story involves the sex-abuse scandal: an issue on which any sensible Catholic prelate by now recognizes the importance of getting things right; an issue on which Pope Francis has repeatedly promised transparency and accountability. And yet:
A powerful Vatican dicastery overturned the sentence imposed by two ecclesiastical tribunals on a priest accused of abuse.
But that dicastery had no authority to overturn the sentence, no role at all in the Church’s judicial process.
Yet the diocese in which the priest had worked accepted that statement as authoritative. Until…
Another powerful Vatican dicastery—the one that is responsible for disciplinary handling of sex-abuse cases—announced that the previous Vatican statement was null and void, and the sentence by the ecclesiastical tribunals, removing the accused priest from clerical status, stands.
Have we heard the end of this story? Not likely. Will we ever hear the whole truth about it? Still less likely. Which is why I say that the case is only potentially revealing. Here’s what we do know:
The first statement from the Vatican was issued by the Secretariat of State, the most powerful office of the Roman Curia. The Secretariat of State (hereinafter “State”) describes itself as “the papal secretariat,” responsible for coordinating all the work of Vatican agencies. Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who released the first statement, is the sostituto, in effect the Pope’s chief of staff, who meets with the Pontiff on a daily basis.
Under ordinary circumstances, an order from State trumps any statement from another Vatican agency. Remember what happened when the late Cardinal George Pell was given free rein to investigate Vatican finances? When he announced an outside audit of all Vatican offices, that order was blocked by State. In fact the audit was scuttled by the prelate who was sostituto at the time, Cardinal (then Archbishop) Angelo Becciu. The sostituto has clout.
But the sostituto also has the Pope’s ear, and would not be likely to make a decision that he knew the Pontiff would not support. It is difficult to imagine that in this case, Archbishop Peña Parra would have rescinded the priest’s laicization without having discussed the case with Pope Francis.
In his order, Archbishop Peña Parra made a vague reference to an “extraordinary procedure” that the Vatican had undertaken in the case. We have no hint of what that procedure might have involved. But we do know that in the past, Pope Francis has been open to appeals on behalf of clerics accused of abuse: from Karadima and Barros through Zanchetta and McCarrick to Rupnik today. Since the priest at the center of this latest controversy is from Argentina, it is entirely possible that the Pontiff heard from some of his fellow countrymen that Ariel Principi had been treated harshly.
To complicate matters a bit, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF)—the office that countermanded the ruling from State—is also from Argentina: Cardinal Victor Fernandez, a very close ally and sometime ghostwriter for Pope Francis.
However, Cardinal Fernandez has announced that he plays no role in the deliberations of the disciplinary section of the DDF. Archbishop Kennedy, who heads that section, has been promised full autonomy in the handling of sex-abuse cases. His October 7 statement indicates that he takes that promise seriously. He served notice that his office issues disciplinary sentences, and State has no authority to amend or overturn them.
Still the Sovereign Pontiff does have the authority to overturn a ruling by the DDF or any other Vatican agency. So it would have been very rash for Archbishop Kennedy to issue his October 7 statement without consulting Pope Francis.
So two influential Vatican officials have issued statements that contradict each other, and it seems reasonable to think that each one consulted with Pope Francis. If they did both talk with the Pope, it seems he pointed them in opposite directions—or else at least one of the prelates has gone rogue. If the Pope was not involved in this case—the latest Vatican mishandling of the most damaging scandal in recent Church history—that too is part of this curious story.