PENNSYLVANIA
GoErie
By the Editorial Board
Transparency, accountability and checks and balances of power are woven into American identity. Not so the Catholic Church, which only began its slow, welcome and necessary pivot to the modern world with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
So it is encouraging news that Bishop Lawrence Persico of the Catholic Diocese of Erie has not only been following abuse-reporting protocols instituted following the emergence of the global clergy child sex abuse scandal in 2002, but is pushing beyond them to improve transparency, as detailed by Erie Times-News reporter Ed Palattella.
Bishops and other church officials are now required by the church and the law to immediately report child sex abuse allegations to police and other authorities.
Persico is going beyond that to make public the names of disciplined or defrocked clergy. From now on, he will publicize the names of priests who have been dismissed permanently from the priesthood by the pope for disciplinary reasons or removed from active clerical duty for reasons related to serious wrongdoing.
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