Tribunal set up to rule on Church abuse case

An internal Church tribunal tasked with establishing whether three priests are guilty of abusing children in their care two decades ago has been set up, the Curia said.

Last month, the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith authorised the Curia to set up the tribunal after considering the evidence collected over seven years by the local Church’s Response Team.

This constitutes a major step towards finally closing the case of the alleged sexual abuse of eight boys – now in their late 30s – while they were in the care of priests at St Joseph’s Home in St Venera in the late 1980s.

The tribunal is made up of an Archbishop’s delegate, who is a judge on the MetropolitanTribunal, and two assistants, who are two priests of good standing and knowledgeable in Canon Law, said Mgr Charles Scicluna, Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

Mgr Scicluna explained that the tribunal would study all the evidence collected by the Response Team during the preliminary investigation, following which the clerics would be summoned and presented with their respective accusations.

The accused would then have the opportunity to present their defence with the assistance of a Canon lawyer.

“If necessary, the Archbishop’s delegate may decide to acquire further evidence by calling the alleged victims to testify further or to confirm or elaborate on their past statements,” Mgr Scicluna said.

Once the arguments for and against the accusations are collected, the delegate and assessors will discuss the case and make a ruling, which will be put in writing.

After the decision is taken, Archbishop Paul Cremona and the three priests will be notified and the acts of the case together with the decision will be sent to theVatican.

If found guilty, the priests would be able to appeal against the decision before the Congregation, whose decision is final.

The maximum punishment for a cleric under Canon Law is dismissal from the clerical state.

Church sources said that considering the wealth of evidence accumulated by the Response Team, the decision should not be long in coming – a matter of months, not years.

Judicial Vicar Arthur SaidPullicino refused to disclose the tribunal members’ names, saying it “is a secret between the tribunal and the Vatican”.

In June, the Archbishop had apologised for the delay in investigations, which had taken seven years, and in the summer Mgr Scicluna was in Malta to supplement the investigations carried out by the Response Team.

Two of the three priests are also facing criminal charges over the abuse. Charges against the third priest were dropped because his case was time-barred.

Brother Joe Bonnett, who died last Thursday, was also facing criminal charges over alleged abuse but was subject to a different set of Church procedures since he was a member of a religious order – not a secular priest.