Vatican reveals new rules for sex abuse cases

The rules extend from 10 to 20 years the statute of limitations on abuse and also codify for the first time that possessing or distributing child pornography is a canonical crime.

But the document issued yesterday did not discuss the need for bishops to report abuse to police or include any "one-strike and you're out" policy, as demanded by victims' groups.

It also lists the attempted ordination of a woman as a "grave crime," as sex abuse is.

Critics have complained that including both in the same document implied equating them.

The rules, from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are the first major document to be issued by the Vatican since the clerical abuse scandal erupted earlier this year with hundreds of new cases coming to light of priests who molested children, bishops who covered up for them and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye for decades.

The church's internal justice system for dealing with abuse allegations came under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations were long ignored by bishops more concerned about protecting the church and by the congregation, which was headed by the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until he was elected in 2005.

The bulk of the new document merely codified the ad hoc norms for dealing canonically with paedophile priests that have been in use since the first major overhaul of norms came in 2001 and subsequent updates in 2002 and 2003, making them permanent and legally binding.

"That is a step forward because the norm of law is binding and is certain," said Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor.

But Barbara Dorris of the Survivors' Network for Those Abused by Priests, a leading group representing victims of clerical sex abuse, said the new guidelines "can be summed up in three words: missing the boat.

"They deal with one small procedure at the very tail end of the problem: defrocking paedophile priests," she said.

"Relatively few kids have actually been sexually assaulted because predator priests weren't defrocked quickly enough," she said.

"Hundreds of thousands of kids, however, have been sexually violated (by) many other more damaging and reckless moves by bishops and other church staff."