In a surprise move, Pope John Paul II has summoned all 13 US Cardinals to the Vatican for a meeting that will address the burgeoning wave of sex abuse allegations facing the US Catholic Church, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
Vatican sources last night confirmed to The Irish Times that such a meeting will take place next week but declined to speculate on the exact nature of the meeting's agenda and on just how active a part the ailing 81-year-old Pope will take in the meeting.
US Catholic Church officials in Washington also confirmed the meeting without specifying any details.
The move comes as a surprise because last Saturday at a news conference in Rome, Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the US Episcopal Conference, told reporters the Vatican had placed the issue of the sexual abuse scandal completely in the hands of the US Bishops.
It would seem that, faced with the growing dimensions of the crisis currently besmirching the US Catholic Church, senior US Church figures over the weekend called on the Vatican to become more directly involved in the handling of a scandal that threatens not only to bankrupt the US Church, putting its huge network of schools, colleges, hospitals and charities in jeopardy, but has also done untold damage to its moral authority.
In recent weeks, New York Cardinal Edward Egan, Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, Detroit Bishop Kevin Britt and Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarcczyk of Cincinnati have been just some of the senior US Church figures caught up in investigations of sexual abuse levelled at priests in their dioceses.
Furthermore, ten days ago, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney revealed that he himself had been accused of sexual misconduct with a teenage girl in an incident of more than 30 years ago.
In New York, six priests were last week asked to leave their assignments because of allegations of sexual misconduct against them.
Last month, Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell resigned from the diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, after admitting he had sexually abused a former seminarian in the 1970s.
Perhaps the most bitter US Church controversy currently concerns Boston where Cardinal Law has been under huge pressure to resign following revelations of apparently systematic cover-ups of paedophile and sexually abusive priests in his archdiocese.
In a letter last Friday, Cardinal Law reiterated his refusal to resign, arguing that he could best serve his episcopal mission by staying at his post.
Reliable estimates suggest that over the last 20 years the US Church has paid out about $1 billion dollars in damages to vicitms of sexual abuse by priests. The Pope made a seeming reference to sex abuse scandals in his annual pre-Easter letter to priests, expressing his pain at the involvement of priests "in this evil".