YORK (PA)
York Daily Record
December 13, 2018
By Candy Woodall
Attempts to solve many problems found in the Catholic church today can be traced back to a meeting among U.S. bishops in June 2002.
It was five months after the Boston Globe had exposed widespread child sexual abuse by priests and a pattern of cover-ups by the church and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gathered in Dallas to vote on a new set of policies.
Those policies gave bishops the power to ban from ministry any priest who abused a child. They also made it a requirement for bishops to report all allegations of sexual abuse of minors to law enforcement and check the backgrounds of all staff in contact with kids.
Additionally, the priests removed from ministry would not be allowed to celebrate Mass publicly, wear clerical uniforms or be known as a priest.
Gone were the confidentiality agreements that had silenced victims and protected abusers.
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