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US Catholic bishops convene to confront sex-abuse crisis

Leaders say they ‘face the task of rooting the evil of sexual abuse from the church’
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Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, right, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accompanied by Jose Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles, speaks to the bishops before the morning prayer during the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), 2019 Spring meetings in Baltimore, Tuesday, Jun 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

U.S. Catholic bishops have convened a high-stakes national meeting under pressure to defuse the ever-widening clergy sex-abuse crisis that has weakened the church.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In remarks opening the four-day meeting Tuesday, he said the bishops’ “face the task of rooting the evil of sexual abuse from the church.”

On the agenda are proposals to increase the accountability of bishops in their response to sex abuse cases, and to create an independent, third-party entity that would review allegations of abuse.

Events of the past year have created unprecedented challenges for the U.S. bishops. Many dioceses have become targets of state investigations since a Pennsylvania grand jury report in August detailed hundreds of cases of alleged abuse.

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Regina Garcia Cano And David Crary, The Associated Press


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