CHICAGO (IL)
Kansas City Star
The 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 prelate said Thursday.
Bishops overseeing a review of the 3-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 Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who led 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.