DAYTON (OH)
Dayton Daily News
February 23, 2019
By Chris Stewart
Area Catholics — including ones sexually abused by priests and those working to end the problem — are waiting for the outcome of an unprecedented summit convened by Pope Francis that ends tomorrow.
But area survivors of clergy sexual abuse — as well as the leader of southwest Ohio Catholics — say justice can’t be served until the church holds not only abusive priests to account, but also those at the top of the hierarchy who hid the abuse.“It would seem that accountability standards for bishops should not be necessary, but unfortunately we know from hard experience that they are,” wrote Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, home to 450,000 Catholics. “Indeed, the current crisis is largely a bishop accountability crisis, not a priest abuse crisis.”
Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Katherine Huffman, who just completed a four-year term on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, agreed. The review board is consulted on cases resulting from the national Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by U.S. churches in 2002 to set firm rules.
“This charter tells bishops what they have to do. It doesn’t say what happens to a bishop if they don’t do it,” she said.
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