The pontifical secret has been in the news lately because of comments by two of Pope Francis' conservative critics. In his second statement on the McCarrick matter, Archbishop Viganó admitted to breaching the pontifical secret by revealing some of the allegations against the ex-cardinal.
In a television interview, Cardinal Muller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cited the pontifical secret when declining to provide details of allegations of child sexual abuse against the late Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor. Muller alleges that Pope Francis ordered him to stop the investigation.
Justin Glyn SJ in his article What Canon Law is For (Eureka Street 8 August 2018) writes: 'Rules like the Pontifical secret, for instance, should be read in such a way as to protect the rights of the innocent and avoid false accusations but should not be used to obstruct justice for victims.' That is either a plea for what canon law should be, or it is a benevolent interpretation of the pontifical secret that is not justified by the words of Pope Paul VI's 1974 instruction Secreta Continere, is not consistent with the interpretation of the Roman Curia, and is not consistent with the findings of the Royal Commission.
In the Anglo/American civil law system, guidance to interpretation is provided predominantly by judgments in earlier cases, some of which are binding and others persuasive. In canon law, binding interpretation is provided by the legislature, that is, the pope and his authorised delegate, the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts. In the absence of such binding rulings, guidance is provided by ‘the jurisprudence and practice of the Roman Curia.'
From 1997 to 2002, five senior canon lawyers from the Roman Curia stated that bishops should not report child sexual abuse allegations against clergy to the civil authorities, two of them stating expressly that it breached canon law. None of these Curia officials or their successors have resiled from that interpretation of the pontifical secret. A letter of 22 February 2013 from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, advising it that clauses in its Towards Healing protocol for mandatory reporting to the civil authorities should not apply to clergy, is consistent with that interpretation.
Fr Glyn further writes: 'None of this suggests that canon law as it currently exists is perfect or measures up to justified community expectations…The absolute terms in which the