APNewsBreak: Vatican to post lay guide explaining abuse norms on Web in transparency strategy
By APFriday, April 9, 2010
APNewsBreak: Vatican to post guide for abuse norms
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican plans to post a “lay guide” on the Web explaining its procedures to deal with accusations of sexual abuse by priests as part of a new transparency strategy.
The guide, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, outlines the canonical procedures that bishops follow when they receive accusations of abuse.
The guide doesn’t contain any information that isn’t available to the public through a trip to a specialized religious library or a Vatican bookstore. But it puts various sources of canonical procedures together in a concise, easy-to-read fashion, without cumbersome canon law citations and Latin phrases. And it’s going up on the Web.
The Vatican spokesman said transparency is an “urgent requirement” of the church.
