Church Punishes Priests but Protects Bishops, Critics Say

It's getting a little uncomfortable for Catholic Bishop Carlos Sevilla these days.

Several times in recent months, the Yakima, Wash., clergyman has had to defend himself against accusations that he concealed sexual misconduct by priests and employees. In one case, a priest who had worked in the diocese was convicted of felony abuse for fondling a 14-year-old girl. In another case, Sevilla hired a former seminarian after the man was charged with viewing child pornography.

"In hindsight, the bishop realizes he could have done more" to alert parishioners to the situations, said the Rev. Robert Siler, diocese spokesman.

Doing more, a lot more, is just what Catholic activists want the church hierarchy to do about bishops who have covered up cases of sexual abuse.

Sevilla is an example of the conundrum facing the U.S. Catholic Church as it struggles anew with the sex-abuse scandal, which Pope Benedict XVI brought up during his U.S. visit last month. The pope repeatedly expressed shame and remorse for church's role in the disgrace and met with some of its victims. To the U.S. bishops, with whom the pope met in the District, he said that the scandal had sometimes been poorly handled and that it is their "God-given responsibility" to heal the wounds and restore shattered trust.

Since then, activists have launched letter-writing campaigns and petition drives to try to push the pope into taking action against bishops who they believe have moved slowly to stop predator priests.

"What is the pope going to do now? If it's nothing, then that is a terrible thing," said Terry McKiernan, president of BishopAccountablity.org, based in the Boston area. "There has been no public action by the Vatican since the pope's visit."

Measures enacted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002 after the scandal first exploded onto the national scene require bishops to permanently remove any priest who has sexually abused a minor. But unless the pope takes disciplinary action, bishops such as Sevilla face only private admonitions from their peers if they move slowly, or not at all, against priests accused of abusing children.

"Action has been taken against some priests, but action hasn't been taken against U.S. bishops," McKiernan said.

"Nobody loses a day's pay," added David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Sevilla is not alone, activists say. Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, waited months to remove an accused parish priest in Chicago, the Rev. Daniel McCormack, who was criminally charged in 2006 and pleaded guilty to sexually abusing five boys ages 8 to 12. George has acknowledged that he failed to act soon enough in McCormack's case.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, whose archdiocese last year agreed to pay $660 million to settle legal claims with more than 500 victims, has been accused by abuse victims of moving sexually abusive priests to different parishes and of blocking efforts in court to expose them. Spokesman Tod Tamberg said Mahoney was one of the first bishops in the nation to implement policies on clergy child abuse and has moved aggressively to remove offenders from the priesthood.