Catholic priests who hear of child sexual abuse during confession must report the penitents to the police, a government minister has said.
Jess Phillips, the Home Office minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, has revealed that the inviolability of the Sacrament of Reconciliation will not be protected under the Crime and Policing Bill.
In a letter to the National Secular Society, Ms Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said that the Government “is not considering any kind of exception to the mandatory reporting duty for religious institutions”.
She said there would be “no exceptions” on the basis of where sexual abuse disclosures are made, “including confessionals”.
Ms Phillips said: “The duty will apply to all individuals undertaking relevant activity with children, including within religious and faith-based settings.”
Her clarification is likely to put the Government on a collision course with the Church because priests face automatic excommunication if they break the “sacramental seal” to divulge the sins of a penitent to third parties.
The Crime and Policing Bill, which has reached Report Stage in the House of Commons, does not include criminal penalties for individuals who fail to report child sexual abuse.
Instead it envisages sanctions by professional regulators or the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Her remarks came in response for a demand from the NSS, an anti-religion campaign group, that the Government denied any religious-based exemptions to the reporting of child abuse.
The NSS requested that the Government should follow the recommendations of the 2022 final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) that called for “legislation which places certain individuals — ‘mandated reporters’ — under a statutory duty to report child sexual abuse”.
“Mandatory reporting as set out in this report should be an absolute obligation,” the report said. “It should not be subject to exceptions based on relationships of confidentiality, religious or otherwise.”
Alejandro Sanchez, NSS spokesperson, said: “We welcome the news that there will be no religious exemptions to the reporting duty.
“Safeguarding children must take precedence over religious interests.”
In his evidence to IICSA, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and the president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, had explained that the sacramental seal was non-negotiable because it was integral to “an essential part of the exercise of priesthood”.
Priests are also forbidden by the Code of Canon Law from breaking the seal.
Canon 983 states: “The sacramental seal is inviolable. Accordingly, it is absolutely wrong for a confessor in any way to betray the penitent, for any reason whatsoever, whether by word or in any other fashion.”
Canon 1388 adds: “A confessor who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae [automatic] excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; he who does so is to be punished according to the gravity of the offence.”
<em>Photo: A priest gives confession to a woman. AFP PHOTO/Jim WATSON</em>
