UNITED STATES
Newsday
By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer
December 13, 2004, 4:24 PM EST
Two victim advocacy groups accused Roman Catholic bishops Monday of abandoning their pledge to root out sexually abusive clergy by reducing the number of U.S. dioceses that will receive full, onsite audits of their child protection programs next year.
But a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the changes were meant only to make the process more efficient, and were not a sign church leaders are backing away from reforms.
Voice of the Faithful, a lay Catholic group, and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the revisions will undermine whatever trust the bishops have restored in their leadership since the abuse crisis began in early 2002.
In each of the last two years, the bishops hired an outside auditor who sent teams largely made up of former FBI agents into all 195 U.S. dioceses. Their job was to determine whether the church had put in place the safeguards required under the anti-abuse policy that the bishops approved at their June 2002 meeting in Dallas.
Last month, the bishops authorized a new approach to the audits at their national meeting in Washington. They decided that dioceses found fully compliant twice will not be required to have onsite visits next year. Instead, they can fill out questionnaires that will be sent to the auditors for review. Some bishops had complained that the audits were expensive and time-consuming.