THE VATICAN: The 13 cardinals in the US began arriving at the Vatican last night for a ground-breaking meeting with Pope John Paul II to discuss the sex-abuse crisis sending shock-waves through the Catholic Church.
The meetings tomorrow and Wednesday will mark the first meeting of senior Vatican officials and cardinals to discuss the problem of paedophile priests.
The US cardinals will seek the Pope's guidance on what changes he would favour before a conference in Dallas, Texas, at which they hope to decide new protocols to deal with paedophile priests.
The 81-year-old Pope made no mention of the crisis yesterday when he ordained 20 priests for dioceses in the Rome area in Saint Peter's Basilica.
In a rare comment on the problem last month he wrote that all priests were profoundly affected by "the sins of some of our brothers" who have succumbed to "the most grievous forms" of evil.
The landmark Vatican meetings will discuss, among a range of issues, the age-old problem of reconciling the church's canon law with secular law.
Canon law does not currently call for a priest found guilty of child abuse to be immediately removed from his duties.
The US bishops would be in favour of such a measure, Monsignor Frank Maniscalco, a spokesman for the US Episcopal Conference, said late last week.
"Experts consider that paedophiles are likely to be repeat offenders. It is therefore necessary to take immediate action to avoid consequences that are heavy both for the children but also for the bishops if the guilty party remains a priest," said Monsignor Maniscalco.
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles said in interviews last week that he would be pushing the Pope to at least consider broader changes, such as allowing priests to marry and women to be ordained. "At this point, I'm a proponent of the discussion. I want to hear a lot more," he said.
Two cardinals at the centre of the storm set the scene for the Vatican meetings by publicly admitting errors in their handling of the crisis, but indicated they would not be stepping down, despite widespread calls for them to do so.
The Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, admitted errors in his handling of paedophile priests in a letter to parishioners on Saturday, and promised that sexual abuse of children by priests "will never happen again" His letter echoed that of the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who disclosed last week that he had travelled to Rome to seek "counsel and advice" from the Pontiff and other senior Vatican officials the week before.
He said he would work to ensure that no priest would ever abuse a child in his diocese again.
The complaints against these cardinals, and other Catholic Church leaders, is that they failed to report to police hundreds of child molestation cases by clergy in their dioceses, and simply transferred the offenders to other posts.
More than 400 complaints have been made against priests in Cardinal Law's diocese alone. The wave of scandals involves clergy in at least 17 diocese across the US. - (AFP)