CHICAGO (IL)
Boston Globe
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | June 18, 2005
CHICAGO -- Three years after the sexual abuse crisis erupted in Boston, the Catholic bishops of the United States voted overwhelmingly yesterday to retain their ''zero tolerance" policy of dismissing from the ministry all abusive priests.
The bishops, promising to maintain their efforts to protect children in the face of an enormous scandal over their past failure to oust abusers, also agreed to set aside $1 million to partially finance a broad study of the causes of abuse within the nation's largest religious denomination.
In an interview, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston pointed out that the bishops supported the revised abuse policies by overwhelming margins: The closest vote was 223 to 4.
''I was very pleased with the vote," he said. ''I think that it indicates that there's still a strong resolution to move forward and there's no backpedaling."
Referring to the bishops' response to the crisis over the past three years, he added, ''I'm not saying we did everything perfectly, but at least there was a very decisive response and one that was an attempt to face the issues, to try and quantify it, and now to try and contextualize it and to see if we can identify causes to be able to make sure that this sad history won't repeat itself."