The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith overturned on Monday the Vatican Secretariat of State’s attempt to reinstate a priest laicized for the sexual abuse of minors in Argentina, setting up the most public clash of competence between Vatican departments in years.
According to a statement released by an Argentine diocese, Archbishop John Joseph Kennedy, head of the DDF’s disciplinary section, declared void a September order from the Secretariat of State, which tried to reverse the laicization of Ariel Alberto Príncipi, a former diocesan priest convicted of child sexual abuse.
The DDF’s decision this week directly countermands a September 23 order signed by the sostituto of the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who serves functionally as the pope’s curial chief of staff.
The unfolding events of the Príncipi case could also indicate that the DDF will insist on its exclusive competence to address cases of clergy abuse of minors, in response to direct appeals to Pope Francis from accused clergy and their allies.
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Argentine priest Fr. Ariel Alberto Príncipi became in 2021 the subject of several complaints of sexual abuse against minors, reportedly centered around the abuse of so-called healing prayers, in the context of charismatic prayer circles.
Following a years-long canonical process in the Diocese of Villa de la Concepción del Río Cuarto, the priest was in June 2023 found guilty of multiple accounts of sexual abuse of minors by his local interdiocesan tribunal. That decision was subsequently confirmed by an interdiocesan tribunal of appeal in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires in April, with both courts acting under delegation from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Both diocesan tribunals imposed the sentence of laicization on Príncipi.
And in a statement to local media last month, Bishop Adolfo Uriona of Río Cuarto said his diocese was awaiting final confirmation of the sentence from the DDF, after the window of appeal had closed.
But two days later, on Sept. 25, the diocese made a surprising announcement: That it had received an order from the Vatican Secretariat of State, signed by Archbishop Peña Parra, ordering Príncipi’s reinstatement as a priest under restricted ministry.
“As a result of subsequent evidence presented by some diocesan bishops of Argentina, as well as by several members of the faithful in the months of June and July 2024, on July 5, 2024,” the diocesan statement said that Peña Parra had informed the bishop that “an extraordinary procedure was initiated, with suspension of the court decision, in relation to the Reverend Ariel Alberto Príncipi.”
The result of that “extraordinary procedure” was that Príncipi was found guilty of unspecified canonical crimes for having been “very reckless in the exercise of the so-called 'healing prayers’,” and was instead placed under restricted priestly ministry.
Peña Parra offered no further details about the nature of the process, or under whose authority or legal competence it was convened.
The announcement was highly unusual because neither the decision nor the means of its communication conformed to canonical norms for sexual abuse cases.
In fact, the sostituto of the Secretariat of State — the role occupied by Peña Parra — does not have any defined role in any canonical penal process. Such cases are entirely unconnected to the sosituto’s work — making Peña Parra’s involvement in the case unclear.
Under canon law, accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors are under the sole and exclusive competence of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which alone can delegate competence to hear and judge cases to other ecclesiastical authorities.
The Secretariat of State has no judicial function or power assigned to it by Praedicate evangelium, Pope Francis’ 2022 apostolic constitution defining the departments of the Vatican.
But in addition to serving as the coordinator of cross-departmental affairs for the Roman curia, the sostituto at the Secretariat of State also serves as de facto papal chief of staff, managing all matters across the pope’s desk — raising the possibility that the supposed “subsequent evidence” from unnamed bishops in the Príncipi case was presented by those bishops to Pope Francis personally.
In some previous abuse cases, Pope Francis has entertained appeals personally, acting to either confirm or mitigate penalities imposed under the DDF’s authority.
However, the diocesan release of Peña Parra’s communique vacating the conviction of Príncipi for abuse of minors and overturning his laicization made no mention of Pope Francis, and all such previous cases have arrived at the pope’s desk via appeals through the DDF.
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In an unprecedented development on Oct. 7, the head of the DDF’s disciplinary section, Archbishop Kennedy, issued a new decision to the diocese, which stated that the sostituto’s order was canonically null, and that Príncipi’s laicization remained in effect.
Referring to “Mr. Ariel Alberto Príncipi,” the DDF’s Oct. 7 order stated that “the extraordinary process, developed outside the scope of this Dicastery, whose conclusions were communicated on 23 September of the current [year], has been annulled,” and that the Secretariat of State had been informed that “the case is again subject to the ordinary process in this Dicastery, according to the rules provided for by the Law of the Church.”
The DDF further stated that no legitimate appeal against Príncipi’s laicization had been filed with the dicastery within the appropriate time limits, and that “the judgment of the Buenos Aires Interdiocesan Court of 8 April 2024, which upheld the sentence of the expulsion of Mr. Principi [from the clerical state], previously established by the Interdiocesan Court of Cordoba on 2 June 2023, must be considered in force in all its parts.”
“Consequently, the case has been closed,” the DDF stated.
The October 7 ruling followed Archbishop Kennedy meeting with Pope Francis in an audience on Sept. 30, along with members of his family, according to Vatican records.
The doctrinal dicastery’s direct and public action, countermanding apparent interference in an abuse case by the Secretariat of State, is without precedent in the modern era.
It does come, however, after officials at the DDF have complained privately for years of lobbying and attempted interference in abuse cases from the Vatican state department.
As head of the DDF’s disciplinary section, Archbishop Kennedy is effectively the highest-ranking Vatican official on clerical abuse cases.
While the cardinal prefect of the DDF would ordinarly have ultimate authority over such processes, prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández was specifically exempted from involvement in his department’s disciplinary section when Pope Francis appointed him to lead the dicastery in July 2023.
In that month, the Holy See took the unusual step of publishing Pope Francis’ letter of appointment to the archbishop, in which the pope said the “Given that for disciplinary matters - especially related to the abuse of minors - a specific Section has recently been created with very competent professionals, I ask you as prefect to dedicate your personal commitment more directly to the main purpose of the Dicastery which is ‘keeping the faith’.”
The disciplinary section of the DDF is charged with overseeing the Church’s canonical prosecution of graviora delicta, or “grave crimes” in canon law. Those crimes include most instances of clerical sexual abuse, but they also include certain acts of sacrilege against the Eucharist, violating the seal of confession, or concelebrating the Eucharist — or even attempting to — with non-Catholic priests or ministers.
On Sept. 11 last year, Pope Francis signed a derogation from the DDF’s operational regulations, obtained last year by The Pillar, excusing Fernández from leading and even attending regular meetings of the disciplinary section when it meets to discuss and decide cases of clerical sexual abuse.
While Fernández still attends and chairs weekly meetings of the disciplinary section on cases involving crimes against the sacraments, when the section meets to decide on cases of abuse of minors, Archbishop Kennedy chairs the meeting and Fernández is not to attend, according to the papal rescript.
Even more unusually, the prefect has no input into the department’s decisions on abuse cases. Instead, by special papal delegation, the section’s secretary, Kennedy, informs Fernández of the section’s decisions after the fact.
In an interview last year, Fernández said that “I can assure you that the dicastery’s disciplinary section has very good professionals who work very rigorously.”
“I am close to them, not to interfere in their work, but to support them so that they work freely and without pressure,” the cardinal said.
