Ten days after the U.S. bishops met in Dallas to debate and approve a national plan to protect children and stop clerical sex abuse, the conference president flew to Rome.

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a former Chicago auxiliary bishop, and Msgr. William P. Fay, general secretary of the conference, were in Rome June 25-28. The norms passed by U.S. bishops require Vatican approval before becoming binding on all U.S. dioceses.

Neither responded to requests for information or interviews. A spokesman at the U.S. bishops’ conference in Washington said Bishop Gregory was spending some personal days away from his office and Msgr. Fay was on vacation.

During their June 13-15 meeting in Dallas, the U.S. bishops approved a “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

In related actions, a 42-count indictment was brought against a Kentucky priest and several other priests were arrested on sex abuse charges. The Boston Archdiocese suspended two more priests because of new abuse allegations, bringing the total suspended there since January to 17.

But elsewhere, at least two priests facing accusations in recent months were cleared in late June following investigations.

One of the most debated elements of the bishops’ plan which passed June 14, and the one likely to lead to the closest scrutiny at the Vatican, is the decision that any priest or deacon with a serious accusation of abuse, no matter how long ago it occurred, should be removed permanently from ministry.

The bishops also voted to set up a national Office for Child and Youth Protection and a national review board and to request an examination, under Vatican auspices, of all U.S. seminaries.

Vatican officials would not say which, if any, of the offices Bishop Gregory and Msgr. Fay visited during their June trip to Rome.

“Their presence in Rome is not a matter of public record,” one official said.

Meanwhile, in Louisville, Ky., Father Louis E. Miller, 71, was indicted June 26 on six counts of sexual abuse and 36 counts of indecent and immoral behavior with minors.

The recently retired priest has been named in 55 of the 130-plus civil lawsuits filed against the Louisville Archdiocese since mid-April, alleging acts of abuse from his ordination in 1956 until 1990, when he was removed from any ministry involving contact with children.

If borne out, the multiple charges against Miller could make him one of the most notorious clerical sexual abusers of minors in the 20th century, alongside convicted abusers like Father Gilbert Gauthe of Louisiana and ex-priests Rudy Kos of Texas and James Porter and John Geoghan of Massachusetts.

In another development in Boston, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney, who has been placed in charge of all sex abuse civil lawsuits against Boston archdiocesan officials, sharply criticized actions by some plaintiffs’ lawyers.

At a hearing June 26 about whether depositions given by Boston Cardinal Bernard F. Law should be made public, Sweeney complained, without mentioning names, about the way some lawyers were taking their cases to the media. “Each day I see the erosion of what I see will be the ability to get a fair and neutral jury pool,” she said.

In New York, two visiting African priests were arrested within days of one another for alleged sex crimes.

Father Cyriacus Udegbulem was arrested in Texas June 21 and extradited to New York, where he is accused of raping and sodomizing a woman on Jan. 1, 2000, at a parish rectory in the Brooklyn Diocese.

Udegbulem’s name was on a list of 45 priests with past accusations of sexual misconduct that the Brooklyn Diocese turned over to prosecutors earlier this year.

On June 25 New York police arrested Holy Ghost Father Peter Kiare, a native of Kenya, on charges that he sexually abused a 12-year-old boy June 16 in Rockaway Beach. At his arraignment June 26 he was charged with five counts of second degree sexual abuse, five counts of forcible touching and one count of endangering a child’s welfare. He denied the charges.

In Savannah, Ga., Father Wayland Y. Brown, 58, was arrested on charges of child abuse and “perverted practice” stemming from the alleged repeated rape and fondling of a Gaithersburg, Md., boy between 1973 and 1975 when Father Brown was a seminarian at the Theological College of The Catholic University of America in Washington.

Brown has been suspended from active ministry since 1988 but faces no sexual abuse allegations in Savannah.

In other recent developments:

— The Diocese of Albany, N.Y., said during the past 25 years it has paid out nearly $2.4 million—all covered by its liability insurance—in 11 settlements with sexual abuse victims.

— Father Mark Roberts of Henderson, Nev., waived a preliminary hearing June 25 on charges he beat, fondled and photographed undressed teen-age boys. He was removed from his parish in January when six youths accused him of molesting them. His trial is scheduled to start July 16.

— The Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., June 21 released the names of 15 priests, none still in active ministry, against whom “credible” accusations of sexual abuse of minors had been made.

— Archbishop Eusebius J. Beltran of Oklahoma City met June 26 with members of St. Francis Xavier Parish to inform them that he had suspended their pastor, Father James Mickus, while the archdiocese investigates a recently received allegation that the priest sexually abused a minor 20 years ago.

— Bishop James A. Murray of Kalamazoo, Mich., announced that in accord with the bishops’ new national policy of removing all known abusers from ministry, he will remove an acknowledged sex offender, Father Thomas De Vita, from his parish in New Buffalo. The abuse occurred in the 1970s when Father De Vita was a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y. He was accepted by the Kalamazoo Diocese in 1995.

While most of the news around the country focused on priests removed, accused or facing charges, at least two priests who claimed innocence in the face of recent allegations were vindicated.

In the Diocese of Richmond, Va., Father John E. Leonard was reinstated June 18 as pastor of St. Michael Parish in Glen Allen after a six-week investigation cleared him of two allegations of improper behavior 30 years ago with students at the diocese’s now-closed high school seminary.

In Missouri, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said in June that her office reviewed an allegation of sexual abuse made in April against Father Alex Anderson, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Eureka, and found there was not enough evidence to prosecute.