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	Cardinal: Pope Will Preserve Sex Abuse Law By Rachel Zoll The News Observer [Vatican City] April 20, 2005 VATICAN CITY (AP) - The new pope, Benedict XVI, indicated he will preserve a U.S. church law that gives bishops broader power to discipline sexually abusive priests, Chicago Cardinal Francis George said Wednesday. The policy, adopted nearly three years ago at the height of the clergy molestation crisis, was under Vatican review when Pope John Paul II died. Advocates for victims worried it would be weakened. But George said he had spoken about the policy with former German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger a few days before his election as pope. George said he stressed to Ratzinger the need to maintain those new powers, which allow bishops to bar guilty clerics from church work without going through the lengthy Vatican process of ousting the man from the priesthood. George said that when he kissed the new pope's hand in Tuesday's conclave, Benedict, speaking English, recalled their earlier talk. "He remembered our conversation and said he would attend to that, so he immediately zeroed in on our conversation," said George, who helped develop the church law. Asked if he believed that the pope would extend the policy, George said: "Based on that conversation, I believe that he will." The church law was due to expire March 1. But two days before John Paul died, the U.S. bishops announced that the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops had temporarily extended it while it was under review. Separately, American bishops will collectively consider whether to suggest any revisions to the policy when they meet in June. David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was encouraged by George's statement. Clohessy said his advocacy group was withholding judgment on Benedict for now, hoping the pontiff will prove sensitive to victims. "The Vatican does set a tone, so anything the new pope does that signals continuation of the policy is good, but fundamentally the ball is in the bishops' court to follow through," Clohessy said. "What we need is implementation more than extension." Ratzinger has been deeply involved in the Vatican's response to the abuse crisis. The Vatican agency he led for 24 years, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, last year was given authority usually reserved for the pope to review abuse claims against priests. More than 700 clergy have been removed from U.S. parishes alone since the scandal erupted. In December 2002, Ratzinger upset victims by suggesting that widespread American media coverage of abusive clergy was "a planned campaign" that overstated the problem; he said "less than 1 percent" of U.S. priests were guilty. A U.S. bishops' study two years later found that about 4 percent had been accused since 1950 - though it did not pin down the percentage of guilty clergy. However, last month, at the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum, Ratzinger, in an apparent reference to the crisis, denounced "filth" in the church, "even among those ... in the priesthood." "Of all the candidates in the world outside the United States they could have chosen, Ratzinger is up to speed on the sex abuse issue," said John Allen, a Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter newspaper. "Ratzinger has been briefed regularly on this issue." George, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, serves on a panel of Vatican officials and American prelates who wrote the special church law. Vatican officials had demanded revisions of the original policy the bishops adopted in June 2002, saying it did not properly protect due process rights of priests. Other church leaders have complained that the policy violated Catholic teaching on redemption and forgiveness. As a result of their objections, the policy was revised to bolster the due process rights of priests. "It's gotten to the point where a mere touch or look or words or so forth was almost equated to child rape as far as the punishment was concerned," said Cardinal Avery Dulles, 86, a Fordham University theologian who is too old to vote in the conclave. "So I think important attention should be paid to the record of a priest and he shouldn't be thrown out of the ministry for just anything considered inappropriate." Under John Paul, the Vatican had also planned a review of all U.S. seminaries, as part of its response to the abuse scandal. A spokeswoman for the bishops' conference said it was too soon to know whether that plan had changed, but several church officials said they could see no reason why the seminary inspection would be canceled.
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