CHICAGO (IL)
Tallahassee Democrat
RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press
CHICAGO - America's Roman Catholic bishops will keep their pledge to protect children from sexually abusive priests as they revise their discipline plan for offenders, a key prelate said at a national church meeting Thursday.
Bishops overseeing a review of the three-year-old policy have recommended that dioceses continue permanently barring guilty clergy from all church work. Some Catholic leaders have been concerned that the punishment is too severe.
"No one wants to permit children to be abused in the church," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George, who lead a team of U.S. bishops who worked with Vatican officials on the revisions. "It's a source of great shame for all of us, a source of scandal for the faithful and for the world."
The bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse spent months soliciting comment on the policy.
"Overall there was definite expression that the `one-strike' policy needs to be retained for now," the committee wrote in recommendations presented Thursday.
Still, the panel noted that "many, perhaps a majority," of prelates hoped that they could eventually allow men who are truly rehabilitated back into ministry - an idea victims vehemently oppose.
Posted by kshaw at June 16, 2005 12:05 PM