The Vatican today rejected proposals by US bishops on how to punish sexually abusive priests and said the American prelates had to go back to the drawing board to revise them.
The decision was a major setback in efforts by US bishops to come to grips with the problem of paedophile priests.
In a long-awaited letter, the Vatican said rules elaborated by the bishops at a meeting in Dallas last June to punish paedophile priests were confusing, legally ambiguous, vague and imprecise.
It said the Vatican could not grant the approval the bishops had sought because the rules could not be reconciled with the universal laws of the Church in their current form.
The letter proposed that a commission made up of bishops from the United States and the Vatican be set up to revise the proposals.
The Vatican repeated its position that the sexual abuse of minors was "particularly abhorrent" and said it wanted to do all it could to support the bishops' efforts "to respond firmly to the sexual misdeeds of the very small number" of priests.