Pope Leo XIV reviews Vatican powers on clergy laicization, weighing legal reform and rights protection within Church governance.
Newsroom (20/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) As Pope Leo XIV settles into his pontificate, one of the first significant legal reviews of his papacy involves a quietly complex issue at the heart of Vatican governance: the authority of the Dicastery for the Clergy to dismiss priests from the clerical state under streamlined administrative procedures first introduced under Pope Benedict XVI.
Those procedures—originally created to handle exceptional cases of priests who had abandoned ministry or caused grave scandal—were later formalized under Pope Francis in Praedicate Evangelium, his 2022 apostolic constitution that redefined the Roman Curia. The reform gave the Dicastery for Clergy ongoing authority to remove priests through administrative decrees rather than lengthy canonical trials, a process meant to provide efficiency but one that has also raised serious questions about fairness and due process.
Legal Faculties in Limbo
With the death of Pope Francis last year, those special powers lapsed, as all papal faculties of delegation do upon a pope’s death. Pope Leo has yet to renew them. Consequently, the Dicastery for the Clergy has found itself in a state of jurisdictional uncertainty. The dicastery’s leadership, sources in Rome told The Pillar, has even proposed relinquishing these powers altogether, or at least narrowing their use to cases of long-term ministry abandonment.
“The idea is that an administrative procedure can be used only in very specific cases,” one Vatican official explained, emphasizing that most laicizations would instead revert to canonical courts.
Critics within the Curia argue that the previous system compromised the rights of priests by providing too few safeguards and overwhelming the dicastery’s limited staff. “The process didn’t give enough rights to the priest in question,” another official said, adding that the system’s finality—administrative decisions approved in forma specifica by the pope could not be appealed—created further tension.
Historical and Legal Context
Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 initiative was born from pastoral pragmatism. At the time, canonical courts were burdened, and bishops faced serious challenges disciplining priests who had effectively left the ministry. Benedict’s special faculties gave the then-Congregation for the Clergy the ability to address such cases swiftly, particularly when a cleric had been absent for more than five years or involved in a scandalous relationship.
When Pope Francis overhauled the Curia with Praedicate Evangelium, he sought to normalize these special powers, embedding them in the legal fabric of the Vatican’s judicial operations. But even after the 2021 revision of the Church’s penal code, questions lingered about the retrospective application of the new norms and the balance between administrative efficiency and procedural justice.
Now Pope Leo faces a dual challenge: addressing the procedural fairness concerns while ensuring that the Church’s own judicial infrastructure does not buckle under increased case volume.
The Push for National Penal Tribunals
Shifting laicization and disciplinary cases back to canonical courts invites another layer of complexity. Vatican officials acknowledge that courts are already overwhelmed, with many dioceses lacking qualified canon lawyers. Some see hope in the French model, where the bishops’ conference established a national canonical tribunal in 2022 to handle cases involving clerical misconduct, financial abuse, and other grave offenses.
Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat, head of the French bishops’ canonical commission, explained that the tribunal was meant to “relieve bishops of the dual role of brother and judge” to their priests. Vatican officials have praised the move as a step toward transparency and independence—one that could inspire similar reforms elsewhere.
“National or metropolitan courts could make sense,” one Vatican official said. “It’s not realistic for every diocese to manage complex penal cases on its own.”
Canonical and Human Realities
Beyond structural reform lies a practical crisis. Across much of the developing Catholic world, there remains a severe shortage of trained canon lawyers. Some dioceses in Africa or Latin America, despite serving millions of faithful, have only a handful of canonists managing cases for entire provinces.
“How can a Church this size not have sufficient canon law schools or trained judges?” one Vatican source asked. “National tribunals could be a remedy, pooling scarce resources across dioceses.”
For Pope Leo XIV—a trained canonist who once served as a judge in Peru—the issue is far from theoretical. Vatican officials say his deep understanding of ecclesiastical law gives him a unique ability to weigh both justice and mercy within the Church’s legal framework. His decision on whether to restore, restrict, or reconfigure the Dicastery’s administrative powers will likely shape not just the future of priestly discipline, but also the broader direction of Vatican governance in the post-Francis era.
Whatever the outcome, the pope’s ruling will signal how the Church intends to balance its dual vocation: pastoral care for its members and faithful adherence to the principles of justice within its own juridical order.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from The Pillar
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