Pope Francis has asked the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to commit to working more closely with the Roman curia in a message to the body’s annual plenary assembly this week — a request likely to provoke confusion from the commission’s members.
In a message dated March 20 but released Tuesday, Francis sent greetings and praised the work being done by the commission, saying its efforts are “like ‘oxygen’ for local Churches and religious communities.”
Insisting that the work of the PCPM, founded by Francis in 2014, “cannot be reduced to protocols to be applied,” the pope called its mission “a promise: that every child, every vulnerable person, will find a safe environment in the ecclesial community.”
“This is the driving force of what should be for us an integral conversion,” said the pope, while calling for three commitments from the commission, with number one being that it “cooperate more closely with the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia.”
At the surface level, few could question the pope’s priority: closer work with the curia would be a very good thing, almost anyone would agree.
But those who have followed the work of the PCPM closely over the last few years and even months, might be left wondering if the pope wasn’t, in effect, preaching to the choir — asking the commission to commit to the very things it has been calling for, and over which it has seemed to face stubborn resistance from the Vatican.
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Ever since its creation by Pope Francis more than a decade ago, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has had to fight to carve out a role for itself in the Church at the institutional level.
Initially a stand-alone initiative meant to provide objective assessment and feedback for ecclesiastical institutions in the wake of clerical abuse scandals, members and leadership of the PCPM have, almost from the beginning, complained that their commission lacks institutional teeth — that the body was asked to survey and disseminate best practice on child protection but without the authority to audit or impose compliance.
Following wholesale Vatican structural reforms by Pope Francis, which culminated in a new curial constitution in 2022, the PCPM was folded within the curia itself, and reestablished “within the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
While the president, secretary, and members remained direct papal appointments, many worried at the time that the commission’s greatest asset, institutional independence, was being removed.
Pope Francis sought to head off that concern, telling members in 2022 that “it was not possible to have a ‘satellite commission,’ circling around but unattached to the organization chart,” but acknowledging that “someone might think that this could put at risk your freedom of thought and action, or even take away importance from the issue with which you deal.”
“That is not my intention, nor is it my expectation,” he said. “And I invite you to be watchful that this does not happen.”
Those assurances did not inspire universal confidence at the commission.
“I unaware of any regulations that govern the relationship between the commission and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,” the priest wrote at the time, indicating that the formal nature of the merger has yet to be clarified and that no one, as yet, understood who was responsible for what, or to whom.
Each of those issues, Zollner said, “need to be urgently addressed,” and “have made it impossible for me to continue further” on the papal commission.
And whatever assurances Francis has given the PCPM about the importance and independence of its work, a persistent concern has been that no one is listening to it — especially in the curia.
On the contrary, many close to the commission report that often the best, if not only hope they have of being taken seriously is when they escalate matters either to the pope directly or resort to press pressure.
In 2023, as the scandal around the disgraced former Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik was at its height, there was widespread public outrage that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — nominally the PCPM’s parent department — would not waive the canonical statute of limitations on decades of allegations against the artist, having previously tried, convicted, excommunicated and then reinstated the priest without any publicity whatsoever.
At that moment, even as the pope’s own diocesan curia in Rome appeared to be defending Rupnik, it was announced that Francis had been informed of “serious problems” in the Vatican’s handling of the case by the PCPM and had “consequently” asked the DDF to review the case, waiving the statute of limitations in the process.
Two years later, the DDF has yet to appoint judges to the Rupnik case, let alone issue a verdict.
Meanwhile, the Vatican’s own Dicastery for Communications has continued to feature Rupnik’s work prominently on its website and other materials, as recently as last week. In response to questions from journalists about the practice last year, the communications department’s prefect, Paolo Ruffini, said last year that removing or otherwise halting the use of artwork by the alleged serial sexual abuser was “not the Christian response” to allegations of violent abuse of women religious.
Asked to comment in response to alleged victims of Rupnik who had called for exactly that action to be taken, Ruffini said “Well, I think you’re wrong. I think you are wrong. I really think you are wrong.”
In response, the PCPM’s president Cardinal Sean O’Malley wrote to all the Vatican’s dicasteries last June, saying that he hoped “pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense” of alleged perpetrators of abuse “or indicate indifference to the pain and suffering of so many victims of abuse.”
However, O’Malley’s message went widely ignored, most especially by the communications dicastery which continues to use Rupnik’s art as recently as last week.
Such seemingly pointed indifference to the PCPM’s requests is not isolated to the Rupnik case, either.
When the commission released its long-awaited first annual report last October, it was highly critical of Vatican departments, albeit diplomatically phrased, flagging a number of deep-seated cultural and institutional issues.
“The commission found a persistent concern regarding the transparency in the Roman Curia’s procedures and juridical processes,” the report said. “The commission notes that this will continue to foment distrust among the faithful, especially the victim/survivor community.”
The report also highlighted a lack of “information and updates” for victims, expressed concern at “lengthy canonical proceedings,” and noted “the need for consolidation and clarity around the jurisdictions held by dicasteries of the Roman Curia.”
As the report was issued, the Vatican was declining questions about the case of the Argentine cleric Ariel Alberto Príncipi, twice convicted of child abuse, whom the DDF had ordered laicized but the Secretariat of State attempted to rehabilitate into ministry through the personal intervention of the pope’s own chief of staff.
In this context, Francis’ call this week for the PCPM to commit itself to working more closely with the curia will likely strike many of its members as baffling, if not bitterly ironic, since it is the pope’s own senior civil servants who seem least interested in its work or recommendations.
In an interview last year, Cardinal O’Malley, who remains in post as the PCPM’s first and to-date only president, struck a generally positive tone about the commission’s impact around the work, noting that it had “after many struggles, come up with a mission and a game plan that's working… to build capacity for safeguarding in parts of the world where nothing was being done.”
About the commission’s place and impact in Rome, though, O’Malley was blunt that “there's always been a lot of resistance to the commission.”
“There's a lot of people who would like to see the commission fail and disappear but we're still there,” said the cardinal.
“Our task is to advise the Holy Father. So there are some times when we have to tell the Holy Father, ‘This isn't working, something's got to be done.’ And that's happened a few times now,” O’Malley said. “We know that he's not always getting good advice around this.”
After Francis’ message to the commission this week, some of O’Malley’s members might wonder if even the pope is listening to what the commission is saying.
