In September 2022, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors began drafting an updated Safeguarding Guideline framework as one of its first tasks under the new mandate provided by the Holy Father in the June 2022 Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium. 

It has taken three years of study and data analysis to develop a draft policy document: The Universal Guidelines Framework (UGF).  

The UGF was developed in three phases: Phase 1 established Safeguarding Principles; Phase 2 established Criteria to translate the Principles into policy and procedure; and Phase 3 established Indicators to measure and review the effective implementation of policy. 

While different, the framework supplements the 2011 Circular Letter of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Commission’s own 2016 Safeguarding Guidelines Template to reflect advances in terms of law and good practices. 

The Commission still considers the UGF a provisional document particularly until its effective implementation is measured to provide verifiable data on whether safeguarding standards can apply universally across a very diverse global church.  

IS A ‘UNIVERSAL’ SAFEGUARDING FRAMEWORK POSSIBLE?  

In 2023, the Commission submitted its revised framework for several rounds of public consultation, inviting feedback from high-level experts, global church leadership, civil society partners and the general public through an online survey available on its website.  

The multi-stakeholder engagement was designed to provide evidence-based responses to the practicability of the proposed guidelines at all levels throughout the church.  

The survey questions were clustered into 16 elements which were categorized by theme so they could be aligned to the UGF principles and provide useful datasets for policy revision and development.  

With close to 800 responses in the three-month period, it proved a valuable learning curve for the Framework development and resulted in the current three-tier document, which was approved for a pilot testing phase in 2024. 

TESTING IT OUT 

Given the vastly different cultural socio-economic and ecclesial contexts in which safeguarding policies and procedures are required to operate, the Commission chose four churches with varying levels of safeguarding awareness and capabilities: Costa Rica, Poland, Zimbabwe and Tonga.  

“Each country has embraced the opportunity to engage with the Commission through training Church leaders, clerics, religious and lay activists in the Principles and their supporting guidance documents.  The initial feedback emerging from these Pilots has provided rich support for further refinement prior to the Commission finalizing the UGF in the autumn of 2025.” – Teresa Devlin,  Chair of the Universal Guidelines Framework Commitee   

Together with the leaders and safeguarding operators in situ the Commission has been engaged in a pedagogical exercise through which it hopes to build models for safeguarding development that is proportional, realistic and measurable in terms of progress made and open challenges which are evidence based.   

LISTENING TO SAFEGUARDING LEADERS 

In 2024, the Commission also reached out to the regional conferences of bishops and regional conferences of religious (male and female) in targeted listening sessions to augment the feedback it had received to date, specifically from the level of strategic analysis.  

“Interactive meetings took place in Europe, USA, Latin America, Africa and Oceania. The purpose was for the Commission to hear at first hand the opportunities and challenges of implementing the UGF and/or updating existing policies.  The sessions provided a wealth of feedback about what is already happening in countries to ensure that a culture of safeguarding is being maintained and how various Church bodies are responding to allegations of abuse.” –  Teresa Devlin 

The many interesting comments will also be used to shape the final UGF: 

The work of collating the datasets from the pilot implementation projects and the feedback from the regional leadership Listening Sessions is now underway with a final revision of a provisional policy document due in the coming months for presentation to the Autumn Plenary Assembly. 

Finally, the Commission is developing a comprehensive auditing tool to complement this policy framework. This tool will be essential in further elaborating the Annual Report on Safeguarding Policies and Procedures in the Church, a pilot version of which was presented to the Holy Father in March 2024.