The DePaulia
Hayley DeSilva, Staff Writer|June 6, 2021
After thousands of reported cases of sexual abuse, the Vatican has finally updated its canon laws for handling cases within the Church — standards which haven’t been touched since the 1980s. The new canon laws, or a set of laws set by the Roman Catholic Church to be followed by members of the religion, sought to streamline and clarify how to deal with child sexual abuse. The biggest of these changes included requiring all priests and nuns to become mandated reporters, making grooming for sex or child pornography illegal, and enforcing punishment within the Church like defrocking.