In this canonical penal tribunal, the Bishops will also be responsible for the execution of penalties, which can fall into three categories known to canon law.
This month, the French Bishops' Conference (CEF) has established a new legal structure to address crimes and offenses committed by clergy and laity within the Church, including sexual abuse of adults.
This initiative is considered a world first: To date, no other episcopal conference has established a national structure of this scale.
The National Canonical Penal Tribunal (TPCN) is, in a way, the result of the conclusions of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE).
In its October 2021 report, the commission called for the creation of such a tribunal. The French Bishops had already announced the creation of such a structure during their plenary assembly in March 2021.
Initially planned for April, its implementation was postponed due to delays in validating the statutes with the Holy See.
The Bishops emphasized that these ecclesiastical procedures are specific to the Church and its religious purposes. They are not in contradiction with national criminal law, as clarified by the CEF in its presentation of the newly created tribunal.
The tribunal is intended to judge most offenses recognized by Church law, including "crimes against the faith and unity of the Church," those against "the exercise of an office," which also include financial offenses, as well as certain crimes against life, dignity, and human liberty, such as sexual assaults against adults.
Cases of sexual abuse of minors fall under what canon law calls the "delicta graviora" – "the most serious offenses." These will be judged directly by the Vatican, as will criminal cases involving bishops and all appeals of decisions from the TPCN.
By acquiring exclusive competence in penal matters, the French tribunal allows diocesan and interdiocesan tribunals to rule in the future primarily on petitions for marriage nullity.
The lack of competent personnel to handle penal cases at the diocesan level and the resulting heterogeneity in jurisprudence were among the main motivations for creating the tribunal. The most important remains the CEF's desire to "distance the handling of cases from the dioceses where the acts were committed."
In an interview with the Catholic weekly La Vie, the president of the Council for Canonical Questions at the CEF, Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat, stated that "in recent years, [the French bishops] have reflected on finding a way to 'relocate' canonical criminal trials so that the bishop of the accused cleric is no longer at the center of the procedure."
"Several ideas were discussed, including having cases handled in a distant diocese, but, fairly quickly, we agreed on the idea of a specific tribunal that could be the jurisdiction of reference for all our dioceses," he specified.
"For many Bishops, this will be a relief: we initiated the creation of this tribunal to move away from a situation where the bishop must be both the brother of his priests and their judge. It was important to clarify the registers of their relationships."
However, diocesan Bishops will remain responsible for preliminary investigations and for introducing the case by bringing it before the tribunal.
The bishops will also be charged with the execution of sentences, which can fall into one of the three categories known to canon law: The "expiatory" type – such as a fine, deprivation of an office or function; dismissal from the clerical state; or so-called "medicinal" censures by canon law, which include excommunication.
Nevertheless, they will no longer have a monopoly on referring cases to the penal tribunal, which will now be open to "any Catholic, or any person who feels wronged by the criminal behavior of a Catholic within the framework of Church activities." It will then be up to the national official presiding over the TPCN to decide whether the result of the preliminary investigation opened by the bishop warrants the opening of a trial.
The very composition of this new structure is also considered unprecedented. Of the 13 judges who took their oath after a Mass in Paris on December 5, five are laypeople, including four women.
This change also echoes the CIASE's recommendation to integrate into the tribunal "not only expert priests, but also specially trained lay judges."
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While this initiative already enjoys clear consensus within the Church in France, the question of funding the high costs this judicial body will require – already raised by some observers – has not yet been clarified by the CEF.
This article was originally published by the National Catholic Register (Article Link). It is republished and translated with the author's permission.