VATICAN CITY – Pledging that clerical sexual abuse should “never happen again,” the Vatican on Thursday unveiled a set of new rules designed to alter how the church deals with abuse accusations – particularly those made against bishops and other higher-ups.

The guidelines, signed by Pope Francis, call on dioceses to create public and “easily accessible” offices for receiving abuse claims. The rules also lay out a way to proceed when prelates are accused of coverup or carrying out abuse themselves, calling for a senior bishop in the region to begin looking into the case with the help of lay experts.

The rules mark perhaps the most concrete attempt to date by Pope Francis to contend with the Catholic Church’s primary crisis. The question of how to handle claims against bishops has long confounded the church, because bishops are answerable only to the pope, and for decades they have been able to escape rigid oversight.

But some experts have said the new church rules will be far from a cure-all, as they still keep the handling of cases in-house.

If a complaint is made against a bishop, a so-called “metropolitan” bishop – the bishop who heads the largest regional diocese – can choose “lay faithful” to assist the preliminary investigation. That investigation is then handed off to the Holy See. If a “metropolitan” bishop himself is accused, another bishop in the region is chosen, based on seniority, to lead the investigation.

In an article in the Vatican’s newspaper, Andrea Tornielli, a senior Vatican media official, called the motu proprio, as the new church law is known, “a further and incisive step in the prevention and fight against abuse, putting the emphasis on concrete actions.”

The steps for handling complaints of abuse and coverup against bishops borrows heavily from a proposal made by Cardinal Blase Cupich, of Chicago, during a February summit at the Vatican addressing the topic of sexual abuse. Cupich is a close Francis ally.

In presenting his ideas, Cupich said that “this past year has taught us that the systematic failures in holding clerics of all rank responsible are due in large measure to flaws in the way we interact and communicate with each other in the college of bishops.”