Pope Francis has issued a landmark decree making bishops directly accountable for sexual abuse or covering it up, requiring clerics to report any cases to Catholic Church superiors.
It also allows anyone to complain directly to the Vatican if needed.
Tackling sexual abuses that have battered the Catholic Church's reputation has been a major challenge for Pope Francis since his 2013 election, with victims demanding a crackdown on bishops at the diocese level accused of concealing or mismanaging cases.
Pope Francis's decree aims to tackle the widespread problems over sex abuse in the church. Source: EPA
Australian victims' advocates said the law was a step in the right direction, but did not go far enough as it did not mandate crimes being reported to police.
Survivors did not believe the church could be trusted with policing its own given the long history of cover-ups and mishandling of widespread abuse by clergy, advocates said.
"There's a real fear amongst survivors that because of its history the church cannot be trusted to police itself," In Good Faith Foundation CEO Clare Leaney told AAP on Friday.
Blue Knot Foundation president Cathy Kezelman noted it was the first time in the church's history that clergy now have a mandatory obligation to report child sexual abuse to senior members of the church and to set up reporting systems for those who have witnessed or experienced abuse.
"What remains to be seen is if senior members of the Catholic Church and the hierarchy will live up to these laws and report abuse when it happens," Dr Kezelman said.
"Until this point, the church has not had a good track record in reporting abuse, protecting whistleblowers or referring reports to police and law enforcement."
Dr Kezelman said the church law required clergy to comply with local law if it mandated reporting of abuse allegations to civil authorities, but questioned whether it went far enough to ensure that happened.
Accessible reporting
The papal change in church law, covering abuse of children and adults alike, also obliges every diocese worldwide to set up simple, accessible reporting systems and encourages local churches to involve lay experts in investigations.
Pope Francis's edict obliges the world's one million priests and nuns to report all suspicion of sexual abuse by clerics of any level. Before, it was just a matter of individual conscience as to whether to report cases.
It calls for whistleblower protection, saying bishops with conflicts of interest should recuse themselves from investigations and that bishops can also be held accountable for abuse of power in sexual relations with adults.
Former US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood last February after he was found guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults, including forcing seminarians to sleep with him.
"We have said for years that priests should follow certain strict rules, so why should bishops and other members of the church hierarchy be exempt?" said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.
The decree also allows victims or their representatives to report alleged abuses by bishops directly to the Vatican or a Vatican ambassador, bypassing diocesan procedures that have been discredited by multiple instances of cover-ups.
But the decree does not alter Vatican policy that clerics should follow local law as to whether they are mandated to report alleged sexual abuse to civil authorities.
Victim's groups and their advocates have called for the Vatican to make reporting of suspected abuse to police mandatory but the Holy See says church law cannot override local civil law because the latter varies around the world.
The papal edict says the "norms apply without prejudice to the rights and obligations established in each place by state laws, particularly those concerning any reporting obligations to the competent civil authorities".
Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's top sexual crimes investigator, told reporters the purpose of that section was to mandate priests and nuns to report abuse within the church even in countries - including several in Latin America - where they are not obliged by civil law to do so.
The 19-article decree, called "Vos Estis Lux Mundi" (You Are the Light of the World), raises to 18 from 16 the age of adulthood in cases of sexual abuse. It also covers possession of child pornography.
The edict came three months after Francis summoned the heads of all national bishops conferences to Rome in February for a crisis summit on sexual abuse.
A spate of abuse scandals has battered church credibility around the world and forced some dioceses to declare bankruptcy because of billions of dollars paid in settlements with victims.
The Church was rocked by the conviction on charges of sex abuse of Australian cardinal George Pell, the highest-ranked Vatican official to be convicted. Source: AAP
The decree sets time limits for local investigations and the Vatican's response to them, and allows for retroactive reporting.
The decree further says local clerics cannot order those who report abuse to remain silent and that senior bishops should make provisions to prevent documents from being destroyed by subordinates if needed.
Many local Catholic Churches have been hit by sex-abuse scandals since they erupted on a large scale in Boston in 2002 with revelations that church leaders there had moved sexual abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them.
