By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When Cardinal George leaves to attend the June 13-15 bishops’ meeting in Dallas, he will go armed not only with a draft proposal for a national sex abuse policy, but also with two reports on the situation in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Before the meeting, Cardinal George will study the draft to make suggestions directly to the ad hoc committee chaired by St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn, said archdiocesan Chancellor Jimmy Lago.

The cardinal’s suggestions will be guided by the archdiocese’s own report on sexual abuse allegations from the past 10 years, input from the public hearings conducted by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago and conversations with local civic authorities and interest groups.

The draft policy the members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will debate and vote on was released June 4. It calls for any priest who abuses a minor to be laicized. Priests who abused more than one minor in the past also would be laicized. However, those with only one past offense could be returned to controlled ministry having no contact with children upon the recommendation of a diocesan review board, which would have to hear from the victim before making a recommendation.

According to Lago, the creation of review boards in all dioceses mirrors one of the biggest steps taken in Chicago in the early 1990s when the archdiocese was dealing with several clerical sexual abuse scandals.

“As I review the drafts, I am pleased to note the committee is recommending structures similar to the ones we have used in the Archdiocese of Chicago, including a review board,” Lago said.

He went on to caution that the draft could change substantially before the bishops vote on a final version.

As The Catholic New World went to press, Lago was still working on the archdiocesan report, which was to give a complete accounting of all sexual abuse allegations against priests in the archdiocese from the past 10 years. A similar report was completed in 1992, said archdiocesan spokesman James Dwyer.

The new report is expected to be made public, as the 1992 report was, Dwyer said. In the meantime, the archdiocese also has turned over old allegations for review by the Cook and Lake county state’s attorneys’ offices.

At the same time, a committee of attorneys from the Catholic Lawyers Guild was working to boil down testimony from 38 public hearings the guild conducted May 21 into one readable report for Cardinal George, said Maureen Hartigan, who is working on the project with guild President David Hartigan.