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Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis leads the prayer to mark the end of the month of worldwide prayers to stop the pandemic, in the Vatican gardens Monday, May 31, 2021 (Filippo Monteforte/Pool photo via AP) June 01, 2021 - 4:53 AM
VATICAN CITY (AP) â Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority, and to say that laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes.
The new provisions, released Tuesday after 14 years of study, were contained in the revised criminal law section of the Vaticanâs Code of Canon Law, the in-house legal system that covers the 1.3 billion-strong Catholic Church.