Written by Justin Dodd
July 17th 2013

[caption id="attachment_9418" align="aligncenter" width="645"] (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)[/caption]

VATICAN CITY — Few eyebrows were raised last week when  Pope Francis brought the Vatican"s legal system up to date by criminalizing leaks of official information and formalizing laws against sex crimes. But now that the laws have been made public, a closer look revealed that the pope has made it illegal to report sex crimes against children.

According to the new laws,  revealing or receiving confidential Vatican information is now punishable by up to two years in prison, while newly defined sex crimes against children carry a sentence of up to twelve years.  Because all sex crimes are kept confidential, there is no longer a legal way for Vatican officials to report sex crimes.

"We didn"t mean for this to happen, obviously," lamented Vatican foreign minister Monsignor Dominique Mamberti. "It"s quite the papal pickle that His Holiness has placed upon our heads. Sex crimes are more illegal than ever, but technically it"s illegal to report them." Mamberti said that the simultaneous passing of each law is merely a coincidence and insisted that the Church is not trying to protect itself against further embarrassment, but critics outside the Vatican are skeptical.

"They know exactly what they"re doing," claims Fabrizio Perona of Italy"s  La  Repubblica  newspaper. "They just thought nobody would notice. The Church wants to impress the world by getting tough on sex crimes, but they criminalized leaks, which is the only way anybody would ever discover their crimes. It"s genius, if you stop and think about it."

Mamberti says plans are already being made to eliminate the loophole, but change often comes slowly to antiquated Vatican law,  which is based on the 1889 Italian code.  "We"re not going to let a dangerous law like this stand, but people need to understand that this is the Vatican, and there is a process here. Voting, incense, prayer. We ask the minors at risk to please be patient with us."

Fortunately, only clergy and lay people who live and work in Vatican City are subject to the new  legislation, which differs from the canon law governing the universal Catholic Church.

As the Holy See moves to clarify the law, Mamberti has warned would-be offenders within Vatican walls that they "are still subject to the most watchful eye of all: the eye of God. His judgment is greater than—oh, who am I kidding? For now, there is nothing we can do."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.