CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times
April 6, 2006
BY ANNA JOHNSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cardinal Francis George, the head of the nation's third-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, said Thursday that sexual abuse of children by priests is a "moral crisis" that threatens to stain the church's progress over the past 50 years.
George and the Chicago archdiocese have been under fire for weeks for failing to remove a priest from church work even though allegations that he sexually abused a boy arose months before he was charged.
The cardinal has accepted blame for the failure and has vowed to correct what went wrong. But he said Thursday that the national clergy abuse scandal is jeopardizing the church and the progress it has made in educating children, evangelizing and becoming more integrated.
"The moral crisis colors all this. ... All of that threatens to be completely submerged into the crisis around the sexual abuse of minors by priests here and elsewhere," George told the City Club of Chicago, a nonpartisan civic group.