The Allentown and Scranton Catholic dioceses will not attempt to stall publication of a statewide grand jury report expected to detail decades of clergy sex abuse.

Officials at the two dioceses made the announcements Thursday, two days after Erie’s bishop said he would not try to prevent the report’s pending release.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is finishing the report of a grand jury investigation started in 2016 into six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses: Allentown, Harrisburg, Scranton, Erie, Greensburg and Pittsburgh. It has not said when it will be released.

“The Diocese of Allentown continues to cooperate fully with the Office of the Attorney General,” spokesman Matt Kerr said in a statement Thursday. “We will not challenge the release of the grand jury report.”

Scranton Diocese spokesman William Genello issued a similar statement.

The Pittsburgh Diocese made no promise. “The Diocese of Pittsburgh has fully cooperated with the Office of the Attorney General throughout the grand jury process,” Nicholas S Vaskov, communications director for the Pittsburgh Diocese, said Thursday. “We are guided by our commitment to protecting children as our highest priority. We cannot comment on something that we have not seen.”

And the Greensburg Diocese said through its spokesman only that it “supports the release of the grand jury report with due process.”

The Harrisburg Diocese has not issued a statement.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, who says a priest molested him when he was a child, said statements pledging not to block the grand jury report are a step in the right direction. However, the dioceses need to do more than learn from the mistakes of the past. Abusers and their protectors, he said, must be held accountable. “My main thing is, that’s all good but we want responsibility,” he said.

It’s not clear what, if any, legal challenge could be used to stop a prosecutor’s office from publishing a grand jury investigation.

The state law outlining jury rules only allows a prosecutor’s office to appeal a judge’s order to keep a grand jury report under wraps. It also says a judge may allow someone mentioned in a grand jury report but not charged to file a rebuttal of the findings. But it is mute on whether action can be taken to block a report’s publication.

Still, lawyers can and do file appeals with the presiding grand jury judge and with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to shut down grand jury investigations .

Appeals before the grand jury judge are supposed to be secret. The Morning Call was unable to determine if any motions to quash the report’s publication have been filed with Judge Norman A. Krumenacker III, who is presiding over the 40th statewide investigating grand jury in Pittsburgh.

However, appeals to the Supreme Court leave a docket paper trail, which shows the law firm representing the Harrisburg and Greensburg dioceses — as well as multiple other defense lawyers — has filed several petitions over the grand jury report.

The court has sealed most, though not all, of the records from public view.

One appeal, which began on June 26 and concluded with oral arguments Tuesday, is asking the justices to rule as unconstituional a non-disclosure agreement defense lawyers sign when they enter a grand jury room. The attorney general’s office, with the approval of grand jury judges, has used the nondisclosure agreement since 2013 and defense lawyers have raised concerns about its legality ever since.

The appeal is not related to the substance of the grand jury investigation, said Matthew Haverstick, one of the Harrisburg and Greensburg dioceses’ lawyers from the Philadelphia firm Kleinbold. It has to do with the legality of the nondisclosure form, he said.

In court records, the attorney general’s office argues the nondisclosure agreement is legal and simply reiterates secrecy provisions outlined in the state Grand Jury Act.

Bob Welsh, a Philadelphia defense lawyer, does not represent any clients before the grand jury investigating the dioceses but filed a brief in support of the dioceses’ position, said the appeal is asking the court to rule the form and gag orders illegal.

“I can’t image it having any impact on what may be spit out of that grand jury,” Welsh said.

The state Supreme Court has been holding its own internal review of grand jury rules.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro inherited the probe of the six dioceses when he took office in 2017. His predecessor, Kathleen Kane, started it as a follow-up to a March 2016 grand jury report that detailed allegations of abuse by about 50 priests and other religious leaders in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and an alleged cover-up by church officials.

Five years before that, the second of two grand juries investigating the Philadelphia Archdiocese concluded, uncovering unreported sexual abuse allegations against about 100 priests.

Meeting in Pittsburgh, the current grand jury has heard testimony from alleged victims and diocesan officials and has issued subpoenas for records. Two clergymen have been charged with crimes as a result of the probe.

On July 24, Rev. John T. Sweeney, of Greensburg, was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse for abusing a then-10-year-old boy during the 1991-92 school year.

On May 8, Shapiro’s office announced the probe’s second indictment, of an Erie priest for alleged sexual abuse against two boys over several years.

Rev. David Poulson, 64, of Oil City, a priest in the Erie Diocese for four decades until this year, was charged with indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children and corruption of minors. In announcing the charges, Shapiro said Erie Diocese officials knew about the abuse as early as 2010 but did nothing to stop it until they had to answer the grand jury subpoena in September 2016.

“The time of protecting powerful institutions over vulnerable children is over, and anyone who abuses kids will have to answer to my office,” Shapiro said.

Bishop Lawrence Persico, who took over the Erie Diocese in 2012, denied knowing about the allegations. Last month, he took the unusual step of releasing the names of 34 priests and 17 lay people credibly accused of offenses ranging from the use of child pornography to sexual assault.

On Monday, Persico announced he had met with Shapiro in Erie and his diocese would not challenge the report’s publication.