In an address last week to the plenary session of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Pope Leo XIV established a semantic milestone that could redefine how the Church legally addresses abuse committed against adults. By subtly altering the vocabulary typically used in recent canonical legislation, the pontiff has opened a path to an approach that shifts the focus from the personal condition of the victim to the very circumstances of the abuse.
Since the revelations concerning former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the question of sexual abuse of adults has become one of the most complex areas of canonical reform. In 2019, with the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, Pope Francis significantly broadened the definition of vulnerability, raising many practical questions within dioceses and the Roman Curia. The original text, updated in 2023, condemned sexual acts committed with minors—already recognized as a canonical crime—and with "vulnerable adults." The law then defined this vulnerability as a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal freedom limiting the person's capacity to understand, to will, or to resist the offense.
This definition generated significant difficulties in application. Declaring an adult "vulnerable" under this lens often meant, on a canonical level, having to establish a form of cognitive or volitional deficiency, lowering the threshold of assessment while intrinsically categorizing the victim as a diminished person. Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a founding member of the Pontifical Commission, had highlighted the limits of this terminology shortly before his resignation from the institution in 2023. In a public intervention, he questioned the relevance of an overly broad application of the law: he deemed it inconceivable to qualify a person as "vulnerable" solely on the grounds that they were, for example, a woman and a parishioner.
The legal ambiguity surrounding this notion also raised questions of competence within the Vatican. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had to clarify twice, in 2020 and then in 2024, that it retained exclusive competence for cases involving minors and persons legally equivalent to them, meaning adults "who habitually lack the use of reason." Other cases of vulnerability thus fall under other Roman dicasteries. The promulgation by Pope Francis of the new version of Book VI of the Code of Canon Law enshrined this distinction through canon 1398, separating adults deprived of the use of reason from those benefiting from equivalent protection under Vos estis.
Despite these clarifications, a debate persisted. Canon lawyers defending accused clerics argued that the wording of Vos estis struggled to distinguish a consensual sexual relationship, although morally culpable, from a true abuse, as if every layperson was inherently vulnerable in the face of a cleric. For their part, victim associations insisted on the vital necessity for the Church to recognize the impact of spiritual authority and power asymmetries on consent.
It is in this sensitive legal context that Pope Leo XIV's intervention takes on its full meaning. Departing from his predecessor's rhetoric, the Pope, himself a canonist, did not utter the phrase "vulnerable adults" a single time before the Pontifical Commission. On three occasions, he preferred to use the phrase designating "minors and persons in a situation of vulnerability."
This shift from an inherent vulnerability of the person to a vulnerability linked to context could have major repercussions. It allows ecclesiastical authorities to assess the precise framework of a wrongful sexual advance, taking into account hierarchical, pastoral, or spiritual relationships. For example, a seminarian accusing a formator or a senior cleric of abuse would no longer have to be evaluated from the angle of any mental deficiency preventing them from understanding the situation. They would be recognized as the victim of an aggressor who took advantage of a specific circumstance rendering them morally or materially vulnerable.
Although this address does not immediately modify the letter of the law of Vos estis lux mundi, the pontiff's deliberate use of this new terminology will logically disseminate through the Commission's work, then within the competent dicasteries, and down to diocesan tribunals.
Leo XIV reminded the members of the Commission that the prevention of abuse is not limited to the development of "protocols or procedures," but requires the formation of a true "culture of care." By thus modifying the Church's perspective on the very notion of vulnerability, the Pope seems to initiate a practical cultural shift in the handling of cases, which could well precede and inspire a future evolution of canon law.