Church revises guidelines on child sex abuse

THE VATICAN has issued a new document making it easier to discipline priests who abuse children, and also made the possession or distribution of child pornography a canonical crime for the first time.

It also lists the attempted ordination of a woman as a “grave crime”, a move which women’s groups have criticised as equating female ordination with child abuse.

The document issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also states that priests who sexually abuse an adult who “habitually lacks the use of reason” should be subject to the same sanction as those who abuse minors. Such punishment can include the defrocking of a priest.