The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday the nation's Roman Catholic bishops will take "a strong position" on sexual abuse of children by priests, but the group's control over individual dioceses is limited.
"We are not one entity," Bishop Wilton Gregory said before a talk at Chicago's Crossroads Center. "We are all juridically established with the bishop in charge of each diocese. But we will have a serious conversation to see what more we can do . . . We will attempt some greater coordination, but I'm not sure how that will play out."
His comment comes a day after revelations that the Boston archdiocese may pay up to $30 million to settle cases against a former priest accused of molesting nearly 200 children.
The bishop said establishing a national registry of priests charged with sexual abuse, a move supported by some advocates, is out of the question because dioceses operate under different legal codes, which may or may not require priests to report suspected child abusers.
"It's not as if the church is one great monolithic structure in another civil monolithic structure," he said. "We could no more have a national registry than all the states have one legal code."
But David Clohessy, head of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said there is nothing to stop the bishops from starting a registry. "Bishops could choose to voluntarily compile such a list themselves regardless of whether civil law may require them to report suspected or known abusers," he said. "It would be incredibly reassuring to the rank and file parishioners that the new priest being assigned to their parish is not a recycled molester."
While the survivors network credits Gregory and his diocese of Belleville near St. Louis for their unusual openness in handling abuse cases, critics say the diocese has followed the common pattern of asking victims to agree not to disclose details as a condition for compensation.
When asked about such practices, Gregory said, "If we look at the situation today, we would not do everything the way we did it yesterday."
He would not say whether the Belleville diocese would stop using non-disclosure agreements. The diocese, he said, was always motivated by a desire to respect the confidentiality of victims.
Clohessy said he objects to such explanations. "Invariably it's the church attorney not the victim's attorneys who insist on gag orders," he said.