WelCom December 2018:
The Vatican has told US Catholic bishops not to vote on proposed new steps their Conference has developed to address the clergy sex abuse crisis.
The directive came from the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops the evening before the US Bishop’s annual meeting began, said US Conference of Catholic Bishops president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.
The Pope does not want US bishops to act to address bishops’ accountability on sexual abuse until he leads a worldwide meeting in February of church leaders, Cardinal DiNardo told the bishops of America’s 196 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses gathered in Baltimore as the meeting opened Monday morning, November 12.
‘We are working very hard to move to action – and we’ll do it. I think people in the church have a right to be skeptical. I think they also have a right to be hopeful.’
‘At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items,’ DiNardo said. He said he was ‘disappointed’ by the Pope’s directive.
The proposed new steps US bishops were about to vote on were drafted in September by the bishops’ Administrative Committee.
They included developing a new code of conduct for themselves and creating a special commission, including lay experts, to review complaints against bishops.
Although they agreed not to vote on them, the bishops planned to proceed with discussing the proposals during their meeting.
While acknowledging their disappointment in the decision from Rome, the bishops affirmed the importance of their own obedience. DiNardo said they were responsible to be attentive to the Holy Father and his congregations.
Source: CathNews NZ