UNITED STATES
Island Packet

BY MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star
June 12, 2015

The Vatican announced it will establish a new tribunal to sanction bishops who fail to protect children from sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

Forgive me if I’m unimpressed.

Maybe that’s a reporter’s jadedness. I’ve spent too many years with the grim details, listening to testimony of victims, reading their depositions in civil cases and seeing how bishops did a stellar job of shielding not the child victims but the accused priests.

And it’s from living in a diocese whose bishop was convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse and was allowed by the Vatican to quietly resign this spring – more than two years after his conviction.

Yes, this move by the Holy See is a positive one. It will exist solely to hear cases involving bishops who have covered…