UNITED STATES
Baltimore Sun
By Janice D'Arcy
Sun Staff
Originally published June 16, 2005
With financial settlements in the church's sexual abuse scandal costing more than $1 billion, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops are expected this week to retain their zero tolerance policy - permanently dismissing priests from the ministry for any act of abuse against children.
But as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' semiannual meeting begins today in Chicago, the bishops will consider revising other policies enacted after the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002.
Among the changes to be discussed will be scaling back independent reviews of dioceses, which ensured the policies were carried out and decided whether to fund a multimillion-dollar study of the underlying causes of the abuse.
"The revisions make it clearer and, wherever possible, stronger," said Bishop W. Francis Malooly, the Baltimore Archdiocese auxiliary bishop who helped draft the revisions.