Facing The Ultimate Priestly Secret

Since the mid-1980s, Roman Catholic dioceses in most American states have coped with criminal cases, lawsuits and ugly rumors concerning priests and the sexual abuse of underage boys. Angry churchgoers say that bishops often covered up the scandals, shuttling wrongdoers to new parishes, where they preyed again. Now, on the eve of a meeting of the U.S. hierarchy at Indiana's Notre Dame University, Chicago's Joseph Cardinal Bernardin has issued a 93- page report that sets a promising new standard for confronting abuse.

First, a committee of experts reviewed all allegations made in the Chicago archdiocese over the past three decades, concluding privately that 39 men no longer in the active priesthood (1.7% of the total clergy) were molesters, while 14 others showed "immature behavior" that was not serious. Second, the committee fashioned a new procedure for complaints. Parishioners will have access to a 24-hour phone hotline. A full-time specialist working with a panel of six laity and three clergy will assess all charges. Priests who are judged guilty will undergo two years of intensive therapy and four years of follow- up, then get church assignments where they will never again work with minors. Instead, the commission recommended that rehabilitated priests return to other kinds of administrative work. The report, declared the Cardinal, "is neither a whitewash nor a witch hunt. It is a blueprint for the future."