ITALY - Vatican mulls over how to protect impaired adults

VATICAN CITY (AP):

As the Vatican grapples with how to sanction priests who rape children, it has also mulled how to punish priests who sexually abuse mentally impaired adults, The Associated Press has learned.

Canon lawyers have discussed including proposals to punish such priests in a new Vatican document on the procedures for clerical abuse cases which is expected to be issued soon. It is not known, however, if the proposal made it into the final draft.

The instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will be the first major document to be published since the clerical-abuse scandal erupted earlier this year, with hundreds of new cases coming to light of priests who molested children, bishops who covered up for them and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye for decades.

The bulk of the new document is expected to merely gather together the ad hoc norms for dealing canonically with abusive priests that are currently in use, and make them permanent and legally binding. As a result, it is unlikely to appease abuse victims who have called for a sweeping "one strike and you're out" policy that goes beyond the current procedures.

One new element that has been considered as the document was being drafted was whether to include as sexual-abuse victims those adults with "imperfect use of reason," said the Reverend Davide Cito, a canon lawyer at the Pontifical Holy Cross University and a consultant at the Congregation. Previously, the Vatican's special norms dealt with the abuse of minors under age 18.