What we know about the Príncipi case, and why it’s a scandal

At the Vatican, there are more questions than answers, and the possibilities are all bad

One month after an extraordinary attempt from the pope’s chief of staff to reinstate a laicized sexual abuser, questions remain about who in the Vatican did what in the case of Alberto Ariel Príncipi.

Despite those questions, the Holy See has offered no clear answers on why an order was issued by sostituto Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra which aimed to to restore the twice-convicted child abuser to the clerical state, or about how the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s disciplinary section was able to countermand that order.

The known facts about the sequence of events, and of the legal processes which govern the handling of such cases, all seemingly point to an extralegal attempt by a senior Vatican figure to overturn Príncipi’s conviction for abusing minors and to restore him to ministry. 

Given how much of his personal credibility Pope Francis has staked on reforming and strengthening the Church’s handling of clerical sexual abuse cases — and the potential for major scandal touching his closest collaborators — calls for some measure of transparency and accountability over the Príncipi affair seem unlikely to just go away.

So, what do we know, what might it mean, and why does it matter?

What we know happened

In 2021, Fr. Ariel Alberto Príncipi became the subject of several complaints of sexual abuse against minors in the Argentine Diocese of Villa de la Concepción del Río Cuarto, centered around the abuse of so-called healing prayers, in the context of charismatic prayer circles. 

Following an initial investigation, the results were referred to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which has the exclusive authority in canon law to deal with cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors. The DDF then delegated a local interdiocesan tribunal to adjudicate the case.

On June 2, 2023, the Interdiocesan Court of Cordoba convicted Príncipi of multiple counts of the sexual abuse of minors and ordered his laicization.

On April 18, 2024, the Buenos Aires interdiocesan court, also under delegation from the DDF to hear Príncipi’s case at appeal, upheld his conviction and confirmed the sentence of laicization. The results were then sent back to the DDF for final approval.

In June and July of this year, according to the Vatican Secretariat of State, some bishops from Argentina presented some kind of “evidence” to Rome arguing for Príncipi not to be laicized — though the Secretariat of State has not said who those bishops were, or how many, or what the supposed evidence was, or to whom they presented their appeals.

Again according to the Secretariat of State, on July 5, 2024, an “an extraordinary procedure was initiated” to reexamine Príncipi’s case. Neither the DDF nor the local diocese in Argentina were informed of this decision at the time. The secretariat has not said who carried out this procedure, or according to what legal process they did so. 

On Sept. 23, after being asked about the status of the Príncipi case, Bishop Adolfo Uriona of Río Cuarto said his diocese was awaiting final confirmation from the DDF of the priest’s sentence, once the window for any final appeal had closed.

On the same day, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, sostituto at the Secretariat of State, signed an order for Príncipi’s reinstatement in priestly ministry, under some restrictions, following the “extraordinary procedure” which, according to Peña Parra, vacated his double conviction for child sexual abuse and instead found him guilty only of “recklessness.”

Two days later, on Sept. 25, the Diocese of Río Cuarto published the “extraordinary” decision on Peña Parra’s instructions.

Then, on Oct. 7, the head of the DDF’s disciplinary section, Archbishop Kennedy, issued a new decision to the diocese, which stated that the sostituto’s order had been canonically annulled, that Príncipi’s case “is again subject to the ordinary process in this Dicastery, according to the rules provided for by the Law of the Church,” and his laicization remained in effect. Kennedy also noted that no appeal had been presented through the necessary legal channels, so the case was closed.

In an Oct. 19 interview with official Vatican media, Archbishop Filippo Iannone of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts — which does not have legal jurisdiction over cases but acts as an interpretive and advisory body for the curia — responded to “several media articles” and offered comments on how the Secretariat of State could be involved in a case like Príncipi’s, though the archbishop didn’t mention it by name.

Iannone noted that an order (like Peña Parra’s) wouldn’t necessarily be outside the law if the secretariat was only conveying, as a secure messenger, a decision reached by a legally competent body like the DDF or the Church’s canonical supreme court, the Apostolic Signatura.

What we don’t know happened

The biggest unknown in the Príncipi affair is what sort of “extraordinary procedure” tried to overturn the former priest’s double conviction for child abuse and restore him to ministry. 

While we can safely say that, whatever it was, it was “extraordinary,” we do not know who undertook that “procedure,” what it looked like, or on whose authority or according to what, if any, law it was conducted.

We also don’t know who the Argentine bishops were who pleaded Príncipi’s cause after his second conviction and, more importantly, we don’t know to whom they made their case — though it was clearly someone seemingly powerful enough to attempt to overturn the entire DDF process and reinstate cleric who was laicized by not one but two tribunals under the dicastery’s authority.

What didn’t happen

While there is a lot we don’t know, there is enough information to rule some possibilities out with near certainty.

For a start, Archbishop Iannone’s response to “several media articles” notwithstanding, it seems safe to rule out the notion that the Apostolic Signatura was responsible for attempting to reinstate Príncipi.

The reasons for this are simple law: the Signatura doesn’t actually handle cases or make decisions on appeals for mercy in abuse of minors cases except (as detailed in its own governing law) in cases where it concerns “a petition for a favor that can be granted by the Roman Pontiff alone” when it acts only to consider “whether His Holiness is to be advised to grant the favor.”

In other words, while the Signatura could be asked to consider an extraordinary plea for papal clemency in a case like Príncipi’s, it could only be asked to do so by the pope, personally and formally. 

Even then it couldn’t — as Peña Parra’s order attempted to do — overturn the DDF process entirely, retry the case, and come to a different conclusion. It could only make a recommendation back to the pope about a request for some special act of papal mercy.

Moreover, if the Signatura were asked to look into such a case, the first thing its officials would do, as a matter of ordinary process, is to request the full case file from the DDF. 

We can reasonably conclude that this didn’t happen here. Because if it had, then Archbishop Kennedy of the DDF would have become aware of any Signatura process in July, and moved to stop it then — if he felt it necessary — instead of only hearing about it after the attempted reinstatement of Príncipi in September and acting to annul the process at that time.

Most importantly, the decisive nature of Archbishop Kennedy’s actions earlier this month indicate conclusively that Pope Francis could not have formally delegated anyone, either the Signatura or any one else, to do what Peña Parra ordered. 

If Francis had issued such a formal delegation, then the results would have had papal authority, and Kennedy would have been incapable — legally speaking — to declare the “extraordinary procedure” void, or to declare, as he did, that Peña Parra’s order was outside “the rules provided for by the Law of the Church.” 

More to the point, Kennedy is a widely known champion of legal due process. However much he might disagree with a decision, it is highly, if not vanishingly unlikely that he would challenge the pope’s own authority directly — or be allowed to remain in post if he did so.

As such, it seems sure that — whoever is ultimately responsible for the “extraordinary” bid to overturn Príncipi’s laicization —- they were acting outside the law in doing so.

What could have happened

In between what-we-know-happened and what-we-know-didn’t-happen, there are several possibilities that might well have resulted in the extralegal effort to return a convicted child abuser to ministry.

The first possibility is that Archbishop Peña Parra bears primary, if not sole responsibility for the affair — since what little formal documentation there is bears his signature. 

It is possible that some Argentine bishops approached him directly as the papal chief of staff, or were directed to him, and that he took the entire matter into his own hands to resolve according to his own judgment.

Another option is that those same bishops went to Pope Francis personally, or through his personal secretary, the Argentine Fr. Daniel Pellizzon, about the case and that while he never formally delegated or authorized some extraordinary process to overturn Príncipi’s conviction, Francis somehow informally set it in motion, passively allowed it to conclude in Príncipi’s favor, and then disowned it when it was challenged after the fact by the DDF. 

It is also possible that those Argentine bishops approached the DDF’s own prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, also from Argentina and a former seminary classmate of Príncipi’s, and that he either set in motion — or caused to be set in motion — some kind of extra-legal process circumventing his own department on Príncipi’s behalf.

Of course, it is also possible that Fernández had either no role in the affair, or even intervened with the pope to support his own department’s move to insist on proper justice being served.

Why it matters

The basic facts of the Príncipi case present a dangerous potential scandal for the Vatican at the highest levels. And, at this point, there are few possible explanations (if any) that wouldn’t cause international outcry. 

A priest was tried and convicted twice for sexually abusing children according to the laws and processes which Pope Francis has staked his personal credibility on upholding. Someone then attempted to subvert that process — and secured at least the cooperation of his chief of staff in doing so.

In April of 2022, Pope Francis told members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection on Minors that the Church’s credible handling of abuse cases demanded “a factor of transparency and accountability.”

“Without that progress,” he said, “the faithful will continue to lose trust in their pastors, and preaching and witnessing to the Gospel will become increasingly difficult.” Those are the stakes as the pope has defined them.

Put in the starkest possible terms, some combination of the pope’s closest collaborators — his chief of staff, his personal secretary, and the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — or even the pope himself, authorized an attempt to circumvent the rule of law and restore a convicted child abuser to ministry.

In the event that Archbishop Peña Parra bears principal or sole responsibility for the order he signed, it is difficult to see how he could be allowed to continue credibly in office — or why Pope Francis would trust him to continue to do so.

If it were to emerge that Cardinal Fernández intervened on Príncipi’s behalf, the matter would be, if anything, even more serious, since the cardinal was expressly excluded by Francis from overseeing cases like Príncipi’s over concerns of how he handled similar cases as a diocesan bishop in Argentina.

The third option, which most Catholics would be loath to contemplate, is that Pope Francis himself was behind a move to subvert the very mechanisms of justice he has personally committed himself to strengthening and defending. And that he did so in a way which maintained formal deniability. 

For the moment, the Holy See is not commenting directly on the Príncipi case. 

But the promptness with which Iannone’s interview was arranged and released, and the studied explanation by the prefect of things which could have been done but, in the light of the known facts, seem obviously not to have been done in this case, suggest that at least some in the Vatican understand the seriousness of the potential scandal.

The ultimate question now seems to be: will the Vatican judge that leaving open the scandal of potential papal complicity in the Príncipi case is less damaging than clarifying what actually happened?