Cardinal Says Church Must Regain Laity's Trust

Chicago Sun-Times
June 10, 2002

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church need to be unequivocal on the issue of priest sex abuse and must craft policies that restore faith in the church hierarchy, Cardinal Francis George said Sunday.

"We can't be ambiguous about this, because I know you are not," George told parishioners at St. Juliana Catholic Church on the Far Northwest Side who gathered for a 75th anniversary mass.

At the close of the service, George spoke of the upcoming conference of bishops that will deal with priest sex abuse. He said the church is a church of forgiveness, but must be prepared to deal with wrongdoers.

"Certainly there are consequences even after sin is forgiven," he said.

In a letter that was sent to all parishes in the archdiocese this weekend, George thanked parishioners for their support "during this extremely painful and difficult time."

He said the church's "progress may seem slow to some," but he anticipates that the bishops at the conference will craft a set of strong and fair policies for dealing with clerical sexual abuse.

"Even if we do it well, we won't have seen the end of all of this," he said at St. Juliana.

George is heading to Dallas this week for a meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. At that meeting, bishops are to debate and set a national policy for handling sex-abuse allegations and punishing perpetrators.

George did not want to comment further after the service. He said he had a news conference scheduled for this morning where he would accept a report on the views of Chicago area Catholics on the crisis.

The report, "Views of the Laity," was released Saturday by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago ahead of this week's meeting in Dallas. The report compiles the responses from more than 2,000 surveys and comments made at 38 forums held last month.

The results show that Chicago area Catholics are bitterly disappointed in the church's handling of the issue of priest sex abuse and overwhelmingly support harsh penalties for priests who molest children.