A recent grand jury report alleging past sexual abuse by members of the clergy and other church personnel in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia “puts a cloud over everything” the church is doing to prevent abuse, said Teresa Kettelkamp, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. The archdiocese placed 21 priests on administrative leave on March 7 in its ongoing response to the grand jury inquiry. What needs to be examined, said Kettelkamp, is the extent to which dioceses are following the “spirit and the letter” of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” adopted by the U.S. bishops in 2002 at their Dallas meeting. As the Philadelphia cases of alleged abuse are re-examined, Kettelkamp said it should become clear if unreported cases of abuse were the result of human failure or a weakness in the process itself.
Cloud Over Efforts to End Abuse
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
“Let diplomacy silence the guns!” Pope Leo XIV told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square a few hours after the United States entered the Iran-Israel war by bombing three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pope Leo XIV’s statement was read at the premiere of a play about the Peruvian investigative journalist Paola Ugaz, who was subject to death threats because of her reporting on sexual abuse.
About a dozen religious leaders from the San Diego area, including Bishop Michael Pham, visited federal immigration court on Friday “to provide some sense of presence.”
In a time of increasing disaffiliation from and disillusionment with the institutional church, a new theological perspective on the church is needed—one that places Jesus’ own teaching at the center.