Church ‘lacerated’ by abuse claims

Top U.S. bishops meet with Pope, discuss fallout

Top U.S. bishops met in the Vatican with Pope Francis on Thursday to discuss the sexual-abuse crisis that the leader of the American church says has “lacerated” the church.

That leader, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was himself accused this week of covering up the actions of a priest in his archdiocese who was just arrested for sexually abusing children.

And as the bishops met with Francis on Thursday morning, Francis had removed from ministry the bishop of West Virginia’s Catholic Church, who will face a Vatican investigation on charges of sexual harassment.

“We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States — how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse. He listened very deeply from the heart. It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange,” DiNardo said in a statement after leaving the meeting on Thursday. But he did not say what concrete steps, if any, the bishops agreed to take to address the crisis.

On Wednesday, as DiNardo prepared for his meeting with the pope, the Associated Press reported that two people claimed to have told DiNardo about an abusive priest in his Texas archdiocese, and that DiNardo failed to remove him from ministry until the priest was arrested on child-abuse charges this week.

The Rev. Manuel LaRosaLopez was arrested in Conroe, Texas, on Tuesday on four counts of indecency with a child. Police say he fondled two teenagers when he was a priest at a Conroe church. At the time of his arrest, he was a priest at another church in Richmond, Texas, according to the AP.

On the same morning that DiNardo, facing this accusation, met with Pope Francis, the Vatican announced that Francis would accept the resignation of Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, the 75-year-old leader of the Wheeling-Charleston, W. Va., diocese.

Francis ordered the archbishop of Baltimore to investigate charges that Bransfield sexually harassed adults, the Baltimore archdiocese said in a statement; Bransfield has previously been accused of molesting teenagers and denied the accusations, according to church officials and court documents.

A major Pennsylvania grand jury report last month documented alleged abuse by more than 300 priests in the state.