LOS ANGELES, April 18 -- Cardinal Roger Mahony, the leader of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, announced today that he is revamping how the church here handles complaints of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, in part by creating a powerful new investigative panel to be led by lay church members, not priests.
In unveiling the broad initiative, as he and 11 other American cardinals prepare to meet with Pope John Paul II next week to discuss the growing sex scandal, Mahony also said that he will ask Catholic schools to take more steps to teach children how to guard against sexual abuse.
He wants a victim of such abuse to be on the panel, which he said will have the authority to decide how to resolve cases.
"We've learned a lot, and I apologize for the mistakes we've made," Mahony said in a televised interview. "In the past, there was an assumption that part of this was just simply a moral fault, but we've come to find out it's far, far deeper than that. And so we've evolved."
A few other dioceses, such as the one in Milwaukee, have established similar procedures, involving varying degrees of lay participation and authority. But Catholic leaders called the plan that Mahony outlined today one of the most aggressive steps taken to date by a diocese to confront the growing scandal that has led to the ouster of dozens of priests, prompted a wave of lawsuits and shaken trust in church leaders.
"I think it's a model that, hopefully, other bishops will follow," said Thomas Groome, a religion professor at Boston College who has written extensively about the Catholic Church. "There has to be far greater lay participation in the oversight of the church. That's the only way to break down the clericalism that has allowed egregious crimes to be committed."
Mahony's proposal echoes other new calls that American cardinals are making to crack down on sexual abuse in advance of their extraordinary meeting with the pope, which will take place in Rome beginning on Tuesday. Earlier this week, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who heads the Archdiocese of Washington, recommended that the Catholic Church develop a national policy requiring police to be notified about all credible allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
Mahony, 66, has led the Archdiocese of Los Angeles since 1986. It has not been beset by the kind of scandal that has rocked the Archdiocese of Boston and prompted demands for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop there. Law and other church officials have been accused of knowingly transferring a priest from parish to parish despite decades of child molestation allegations. The priest has since been defrocked.
But Mahony is facing growing questions about how he has dealt with allegations of sexual abuse involving priests. Earlier this year, he dismissed eight priests involved in such cases, but initially he did not give their names to police.
Last week, Steve Cooley, the district attorney of Los Angeles, warned the archdiocese that if it failed to cooperate fully with law enforcement officials probing allegations of abuse by priests, the investigation might be turned over to a grand jury with the power to subpoena top church officials. Mahony has said that the church is not withholding any information.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which has nearly 300 parishes spread over three counties in Southern California, already has an advisory council on sexual abuse. It has nine members, two of whom are priests. But its role in shaping church policy, or resolving abuse cases involving priests, is limited.
Mahony said he wants to expand the panel's membership to 15, only three of whom would be priests, and to give it much more clout. Mahony told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that he will ask the new panel to reexamine the archdiocese's policies on handling sexual abuse and that he intends to give it the final say over such cases.
The plan that Mahony detailed also calls on the church to provide more help to the victims of sexual abuse by creating new spiritual counseling programs for them. And he said that he is appointing a task force to examine the financial toll of the sexual abuse cases.
Mahony said that in the past some churches receiving a priest accused or under suspicion of sexual abuse were not even informed about his potential problem. "That's a terrible, terrible error," he said.
Groome said Mahony has to take a prominent national role in responding to the church's sex scandal because other cardinals, such as Law, have been discredited. "I look to Mahony for real leadership on this," he said.
David Clohessy, president of a national group of victims of sexual abuse by priests, was skeptical of Mahony's proposal. He called it a "belated and begrudging stab at damage control."
But A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest who has testified as an expert witness in dozens of lawsuits filed by victims of abuse against the Catholic Church, said Mahony's plan could be an important change.
In the past, he said, the church often simply tried to buy the silence of its victims rather than correct problems. "Any movement toward a more effective response to victims is very welcome and should be encouraged," Sipe said.
Special correspondent Jeff Adler contributed to this report.