VATICAN CITY (AP)--Pope John Paul II met Thursday with leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States a day before the Vatican will release its evaluation of the U.S. bishops' clerical sex abuse policy.
The Vatican said John Paul met with Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, its vice president, Bishop William Skylstad, and its secretary-general, Monsignor William Fay.
No details of the talks were given, but a senior Vatican official said earlier this week that the pope has been kept informed of the Vatican study of the U.S. policy.
The Vatican response will be made public Friday, officials said.
American bishops adopted the policy in June after a wave of sex abuse allegations against priests and reports that their superiors tried to cover up wrongdoing by moving known offenders from parish to parish.
The bishops want Vatican approval so their policy has the full weight of Rome behind it. A rejection would be an embarrassing blow to U.S. bishops who are struggling to restore credibility in the wake of the scandal.
The provisions in the new policy include requiring dioceses to remove guilty priests from church work, and, in some instances, from the priesthood itself.
It also removes a statute of limitations for abuse claims, saying a guilty priest will be relieved of his ministry for ``even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor--past, present or future.''
Church lawyers have questioned whether the plan conflicts with canon law and the due process rights of accused clergy and whether the diocesan lay review boards mandated in the plan have too much authority.
However, there have been indications that the Vatican, despite some misgivings, was leaning toward accepting the policy on an experimental basis.
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press after talks with cardinals in Rome, said he expected the pope would accept the policy, and would grant the American Church a waiver to get around aspects of church law that may conflict with the new rules.
As a possible sign of the Vatican's willingness to back the U.S. bishops, the influential Italian Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica published an editorial Thursday stating the U.S. proposals without criticism and noting that the pope has said there is no room in the priesthood for clerics who commit crimes against young people.
The magazine's editorials are cleared by the Vatican. In the past, it has carried several articles suggesting that the U.S. policy violated the civil rights of priests and critical of the treatment of the scandal by the American media.