ROME, April 15 -- Pope John Paul II has summoned American cardinals to a special meeting in Rome to discuss sexual abuse of children by priests, taking his first direct public role in addressing a scandal that has shaken the church in the United States and other countries.
The closed-door session, announced by the church today, is tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Scholars said it has been more than a decade since the pope last called U.S. cardinals to Rome to discuss the church in America.
"This is a recognition of the magnitude of the problem, that an extraordinary measure like calling together the cardinals is being taken," said Dennis M. Doyle, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Church sources said the pope invited 11 American cardinals -- the eight who lead the largest Catholic communities in the United States, including Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, plus three who hold posts in Rome.
No agenda was announced for the meeting, which will also include the top two officers of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Bishop William S. Skylstad, the conference's vice president, said the meeting "might help to frame the discussion" that American bishops will have at their annual convention in June in Dallas. Among the key questions, he said, is "whether we should have a nationally mandated policy concerning sexual abuse."
Skylstad noted that in the state of Washington, where he leads the diocese of Spokane, all members of the clergy are required by law to report any evidence of child abuse to civil authorities. "For us the mandatory reporting law has been a blessing, but some states don't have that. It could be something that should be a policy for the whole country," he said.
Because the more than 250 bishops in the United States are formally equals, the conference has limited ability to set binding policies. For the most part, it issues nonbinding resolutions and recommendations that individual bishops are free to adopt or disregard. With the pope's backing, however, a policy could be adopted unanimously and be mandatory for all the U.S. bishops.
Since the scandal began in January in Boston with disclosures that a pedophile priest had been quietly transferred from parish to parish, it has spread across the country. Bishops in many dioceses have reviewed their records and dismissed priests accused of molesting children in the past. In some states, prosecutors have asked for the church's files and promised to prosecute whenever possible.
Last week, top officials of the U.S. bishops conference met with the pope and Vatican officials. Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, the conference president, said afterward that the 81-year-old pontiff was deeply concerned about the scandal.
"We came away from these conversations with a strong sense of the Holy See's desire to listen and to support our efforts to respond effectively to the concerns we share with our people," Gregory said.
Christopher M. Bellitto, a church historian and academic editor of the Paulist Press, a Catholic publishing house, said Gregory's remarks left the impression that the pope was "washing his hands of the problem and letting the Americans take care of it on their own." But Bellitto said that now seems not to be the case.
"What the Catholic laity wants to know is: Is the pope concerned about this problem because a very small number of priests were allowed to do a very great amount of damage, or is he concerned because it makes the church look bad?" Bellitto said. "Is he going to address the problem or just the scandal?"
John Paul last summoned U.S. cardinals in 1989 to discuss tensions between U.S. Catholics and the Vatican over such issues as birth control and divorce.
The pope has given no indication whether he will ask for the resignation of Boston's embattled Cardinal Bernard Law, who has said that he intends to stay in his post.
John Paul has publicly addressed the church's latest sex abuse scandal only in a brief passage in his annual message to priests before Easter. Lamenting that "some of our brothers have betrayed the grace of ordination," he said "a dark shadow of suspicion" had been "cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with historic self-sacrifice."
In January, new guidelines for dealing with such cases were published in the 2001 yearbook of Vatican documents.
The directive said, in essence, that the Vatican should be notified immediately of any accusations or suspicions about priests' behavior with minors. It said that pedophile cases were subject to pontifical secrecy, but church officials said the policy was not intended to prevent such cases from being reported to civil authorities.
Special correspondent Delaney reported from Rome, staff writer Cooperman from Washington.