UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Apr. 11, 2014

Commissions set up by church officials to advise church officials on clergy sexual abuse have a checkered history. No one knows this better than Catholics who answered their bishops’ call to serve, but found themselves and their advice rejected or ignored.

The U.S. bishops named a 12-member blue-ribbon panel of lay advisers amid the firestorm of media coverage in 2002.

“A lot of American bishops would not want to see any of us of the original review board named to this [pontifical] commission,” said Nicholas Cafardi, who served on the National Review Board from 2002 to 2004.

“The report we wrote in 2004 was pretty rough on the bishops,” said Cafardi, a Duquesne University law professor, dean emeritus and canon lawyer. “If [the pope and the Vatican] want a credible board, they should have at least one American…