Pope John Paul has summoned US cardinals and American church leaders to Rome for a special meeting next week to discuss the paedophilia crisis that has rocked the Church, a Vatican official said today.
The official said the meeting would begin early next week and would also be attended by senior Vatican officials.
It was not clear how long the meetings would last.
In his first comments on the paedophilia crisis last month, John Paul II wrote that all priests are profoundly affected by "the sins of some of our brothers" who have succumbed to "the most grievous forms" of evil.
Among the US cardinals summoned to Rome are New York Archbishop Edward Egan and Boston Cardinal Bernard Law who have come under fire for covering up years of abuse by priests in their charge.
Last week, Archbishop Egan yielded to strong public pressure to reverse course and hand over to city prosecutors a list of sexual abuse allegations against priests dating back decades.
Last month, Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles sacked or forced into retirement several priests accused of alleged sexual misconduct of child abuse and as he came under intense fire for refusing to publicly name the priests.
The cardinal himself was forced to deny sexual misconduct dating from 1970, alleged by a woman who was a student at a Catholic high school, but police quickly dismissed the charges by the woman who admitted she was mentally ill.
Since January, dozens of priests in at least 17 US dioceses have been removed or suspended in cases of sexual abuse.
In a case that highlighted the Church's apparent failure to deal with wide-scale abuse, Father John Geoghan (66) was sentenced to 10 years in prison last month for sexually abusing a boy in Boston in 1991.
More than 130 complaints had been brought against Father Geoghan, but church officials responded by moving him from parish to parish and paying out secret compensation.
AFP