ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
Posted by Barbara Dorris on March 05, 2013
The top Catholic prelates of Boston and Chicago apparently disagree on whether or not “zero tolerance” for predators is or is not the world-wide policy of the church.
Cardinal Francis George claims it is. Yesterday, he told reporters in Rome that zero tolerance is now “the universal law of the church.”
But hours later, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston told The Wall Street Journal that “making sure that measures aimed at combating sexual abuse by clerics get enforced across Catholicism’s global sprawl will be a “monumental task” for the next pope.
“The Holy See is going to have to mandate these into polices, “ O’Malley said, and “would be reviewing the thicket of guidelines developed by national bishops conferences around the world.”
The Journal also noted that “In recent years, these conferences have scrambled to get guidelines in place. Bishops in Italy and Germany created their own policies only after hundreds of people had come already forward across Europe to report allegations of sex abuse.”
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