CHICAGO (IL)
Newsday
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER. This story was supplemented with wire service reports.
June 18, 2005
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly Friday for a five-year extension of their landmark policy barring any priest from ministry who has ever molested a child.
Despite widespread concerns that a zero-tolerance philosophy was too punitive and flew in the face of Catholic teachings about forgiveness, many bishops said they had no choice but to recommit to it in order to regain the trust of the faithful.
"Our real convictions come from the failure of oversight of priests by bishops in the past," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George, who oversaw the review of the 2002 policy in tandem with Vatican officials.
Besides mandating the removal of any priest found by the church to have abused a child, the policy requires bishops to report allegations of sex abuse to civil authorities and to run diocesanwide programs to promote awareness of child sexual abuse.