Angelus News | April 21, 2023 | Vol. 8 No

law and its recent updates as a cornerstone
of the “very clear, limpid, and
beautiful teaching of Pope Francis,
which we must all treasure.”
Others, however, were less impressed.
Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org
described the pope’s
revisions to “Vos Estis” as a “big
disappointment,” saying the policy
needed “an extensive revamping, not
a few tweaks.”
In substance, she cited four flaws
with “Vos Estis”: 1) It remains a policy
of bishops policing other bishops; 2)
it does not require public disclosure
or an investigation or its outcome; 3)
it does not make bishops and superiors
mandatory reporters beyond the
requirements of civil law wherever
they live; and 4) it limits lay roles in
the investigatory process.
BishopAccountability.org claimed
that only about 40 bishops have been
investigated to date under the terms
of “Vos Estis,” only half have received
any sanction, and even in those cases
the punishment has been quiet and
mild. None have been laicized or
deprived of their standing as a bishop,
the group said.
No doubt, debate over “Vos Estis”
will continue. In the meantime, it’s
worth noting that whatever the limits
of the policy, the pope’s revisions at
least point to what many experts have
long regarded as the next frontier in
anti-abuse efforts: lay movements and
associations.
A decade after the scandals first
erupted in the United States, the
Church today has fairly strong
measures in place to deal with clergy
accused of sexual abuse. Especially
if that charge involves a minor, the
cleric is almost automatically suspended
from ministry and the accusation is
made public. If an investigation finds
merit to the charge, the cleric is likely
to be laicized.
If an investigation also determines
that the cleric’s superior dropped the
ball, punishment may not be quite as
swift and certain, but at a minimum
that superior’s career path in the
Church probably is fatally stalled.
When the offender in question is a
lay person, however, especially if he
Jean Vanier, founder of the International Federation of
L’Arche Communities, in 2008. | CNS/NANCY WIECHEC
or she isn’t on the Church’s direct
payroll, the situation is far less clear.
Recently, two leaders of prominent
lay movements in Catholicism have
been found guilty of a longstanding
pattern of abuse: Canadian layman
Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche
movement, and Peruvian layman
Luis Fernando Figari, founder of the
Sodality of Christian Life.
In Vanier’s case, a report commissioned
by L’Arche concluded that he
had engaged in manipulative sexual
relationships with at least 25 women
from 1952 to 2019; an ecclesiastical
investigation of Figari, meanwhile,
determined that he had engaged in a
wide range of sexual abuse as well as
abuses of power and conscience.
In those two cases, Church authorities
had some tools at their disposal
because both Vanier and Figari led international
organizations that enjoyed
official Vatican recognition. Many
observers believe an even tougher
challenge involves reports of abuse
committed by individuals or organizations,
which present themselves as
Catholic, but which are not recognized
by officialdom and over whom
authorities have little real control.
For an example, consider the Catholic
Culture and Environment Association
located on the Italian island of
Sicily, which, at its peak, numbered
around 5,000 members. Its leader, a
layman named Pietro Capuana who’s
now in his early 80s, was considered
by his followers to be the reincarnation
of the Archangel Michael.
In 2017, Capuana was arrested
on charges of sexually abusing girls
between the ages of 11 and 16. Three
other members of the group, all
women, were charged as accomplices
for allegedly selecting and grooming
Capuana’s victims. Their long-delayed
trial is currently underway in Sicily,
with the defense case set to begin in
the next hearing scheduled for April
18.
Although the group did not have any
official ecclesiastical recognition, its
founder was a popular Sicilian priest
and “spiritual son” of the famed Capuchin
mystic Padre Pio named Father
Stefano Cavalli. The group routinely
held its meetings in a Catholic parish,
while its events were sometimes advertised
in a diocesan publication.
Internal documents suggest that
the Diocese of Acireale in Sicily was
aware of charges of suspect behavior
against the group as early as the 1970s,
but officials have insisted the concerns
were of a doctrinal and spiritual
nature rather than sexual abuse.
In effect, the Sicilian group appears
to have fallen into an ecclesiastical
blind spot, publicly holding itself out
as authentically Catholic but with no
real oversight, either from the local
diocese or from the Vatican.
For victims, of course, the fine points
of Church law undoubtedly aren’t
all that important — if the group
appeared to have the Church’s blessing,
and if no one in authority ever
told them otherwise, they’ll naturally
conclude the Church was somehow
complicit.
How to make the Church’s new
anti-abuse policies stick with such lay
groups, which operate on the margins
of Catholic life and which have a pattern
of successfully evading efforts at
control of any sort, seems destined to
be yet another test of “Vos Estis” and
the broader reform efforts of Francis.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
April 21, 2023 • ANGELUS • 21