The judicial and extrajudicial penal process

Rev. Marcin Wolczko’s chapter outlines the judicial and extrajudicial (administrative) penal processes in the Church, with particular focus on offences against the sixth commandment committed by clerics with minors. The author begins by recalling the aims of penal proceedings – restoring violated justice, fostering the amendment of the offender, repairing scandal, and at the same time guaranteeing the accused the right of defence and a lawful, just judgment – and then discusses the significance of Pope Francis’s reform of canon 1341 CIC, which has made the penal process the ordinary, rather than exceptional, response to crime. The chapter describes the course of proceedings from the completion of the preliminary investigation, through the ordinary’s decision on whether there are grounds to open a penal process and which form to choose (judicial or administrative), to the role of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in reserved cases, where it decides on the initiation and type of process after receiving the acts accompanied by the ordinary’s votum. Reference is made to the norms on the most serious delicts in the motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela and to canons 1717, 1720, and 1721 CIC, which provide the legal framework for these procedures and help define practical criteria for choosing the appropriate form of process while balancing the good of the community with the protection of the accused’s rights.