Your Holiness,

we are turning to You in a very important but at the same time painful matter and that is the question of judgement and punishment of offences committed by cardinals and bishops of the Catholic Church. The current canon law and practice in this matter are practically ineffective. On the contrary, an unwritten law and practice in the Church is nowadays a so-called punishment by promotion. A bishop who obviously commits some offence and provokes a public scandal, is withdrawn from his hitherto office, yet he is subsequently encharged with an even higher post, mostly one in the Roman Dicasteries, and thereby given even greater spiritual power to the detriment of the Church.

Your Holiness, please, appoint a special tribunal under Your direct supervision, comprised of honest and just men who would receive accusations against cardinals and bishops and would have the authority to judge them justly and impose punishments not excluding suspension and major excommunication.

St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, says on this topic: “Woe, woe, that is why the members of Christ’s body are rotting off, because there is noone who would discipline and punish them.”