New Report Clouds Bishops' Conference
D A L L A S, June 12 -- U.S. Catholic bishops will receive an unwelcome surprise as they gather here for a two-day meeting on sex-abuse allegations — a newspaper study that exposes a deeper problem than expected.
Two-third of bishops who run the 178 mainstream Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States have engaged in some sort of concealment or transfer of priests with histories of sexual abuse, according to the Dallas Morning News.
In a story published today — one day before the start of the bishops' conference — the Morning News looked at a range of situations: a bishop ignoring warning signs or accusations, transferring or continuing to employ in the same job a priest who admitted having a problem.
"In Tucson, the bishop has been facing in recent years several lawsuits and has actually had cases where priests have admitted to him abusing boys and he's kept them on," Pam Maples, projects editor for the Morning News, told ABCNEWS.
Public Opinion of the Church Dropping
The newspaper found that Tucson's Bishop Manuel Moreno has been battling nearly a dozen lawsuits claiming he did not act on serious accusations that at least four priests had abused minors.
"When you read what's happening in Tucson in the files, it very much echoes the kinds of things you've been reading out of Boston," Maples said.
The report came as Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy of the Archdiocese of New York resigned after admitting to severalaffairs with women. McCarthy, a pastor of St. ElizabethAnn Seton Church in Westchester County, announced his resignation hours after the Vatican accepted the resignation of Bishop J. Kendrick Williams, 65, ofLexington, Ky., who was accused in three sex abuse cases.
McCarthy is the fourth U.S. bishop to resign since the current sex scandal broke out.
Hoping for a Consensus on Handling Allegations
Boston is the epicenter for the sex-abuse scandal confronting the church. Although abuse allegations have been with the church for years, it was the disclosure earlier this year that Boston church officials moved serial pedophile John Geoghan from parish to parish that led to the widespread national attention.
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