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	Church Bulletins to Name Sex-Abuse Scandal Priests The Jersey Journal March 22, 2006 http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-0/ 1143022342194710.xml&coll=3 The Newark Archdiocese has implemented a new policy to alert parishioners whenever a priest is permanently barred from the ministry because of a sex abuse allegation, a spokesman said, a policy used to alert some Hudson County parishioners last weekend of the retirement of Monsignor Peter Cheplic. The archdiocese was previously the state's only Roman Catholic diocese that did not routinely alert parishioners when their priest, or former priest, was prohibited from wearing a collar because of sex allegations. Now the archdiocese has begun making it known at every church where those priests served - generally through church bulletin notes - that they were removed because of an accusation, said James Goodness, a spokesman for Newark Archbishop John J. Myers. Goodness would not say exactly when archdiocese officials changed the policy. On Sunday, there was an announcement in church bulletins in five parishes where Cheplic worked from 1972 to 2005, saying that because of a recent archdiocesan review board decision to hold a church trial against him over sex-abuse allegations, Cheplic decided to permanently retire. Cheplic most recently served at St. Henry's Church in Bayonne. The Newark archdiocese has come under criticism for alerting parishioners directly only in limited circumstances: only if the accused priest was a pastor, and only in churches he worked at when accused, rather than wherever he had worked before or since. "We've . adapted as times have adapted," Goodness said. "We now will be placing them (bulletin notes) in any place where a priest had served, at the conclusion of the (diocese's investigative) process." Sunday's announcement about Cheplic ran at St. Aloysius in Jersey City; St. Matthew in Ridgefield; St. Henry's in Bayonne; St. Lawrence in Weehawken, and St. Joseph of the Palisades in West New York. The note will run next week at Holy Spirit/Our Lady Help of Christians in East Orange, another parish where Cheplic had worked. Last fall, three men accused Cheplic of molesting them decades ago. David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, a victims group, said of the new policy, 'I suppose at one level it's progress, but only if it is consistently implemented. History tells us that such pledges from church officials usually are not (implemented)."
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