The Vatican formally approved a revised plan today on how the US Roman Catholic Church should punish priests caught up in the clergy sexual-abuse scandal.
"The Holy See is fully supportive of the bishops' efforts to combat and to prevent such an evil," Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Congregation for Bishops, said in a letter to Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the US Bishops Conference.
The Vatican rejected the original regulations, known as "norms", drawn up by US bishops in October to deal with the worst crisis to hit the U.S. Catholic Church. The Vatican said the rules were inadequate, confusing and legally ambiguous.
The new norms were subsequently worked out by a special US-Vatican commission. Cardinal Re said they provided "effective protection for minors" while also safeguarding the rights of an accused priest to have a fair hearing.
The approval of the regulations came just three days after the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, whose Boston archdiocese is at the heart of the crisis.
