Roman Catholic archbishops in India are likely to set final guidelines to be followed in cases of sexual abuse complaints against priests, church officials said Sunday.The new policy is expected to recommend cases be forwarded to lay authorities for action. That would be in line with policy recently spelled out by the Vatican, an official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
The Vatican posted on its website April 12 what it claimed was a long-standing policy telling bishops to report abuse to police, where civil laws require it. Such a policy had never been explicitly stated, however, and the guideline was not an official instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The two-day meeting in Bangalore of more than 40 archbishops from across India was related to internal administration and the recent accusations of sex abuse would be discussed, said Babu Joseph Karakombil, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishop's Conference of India.
"The bishops will take it up and consider issuing policy guidelines on protecting children against abuses and how to protect their rights," he told The Associated Press.
The meeting comes amid revelations about a Roman Catholic priest from India, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, who was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota.
Critics of the Catholic Church highlighted Jeyapaul's case as an example of what they said is a practice of protecting child-molesting priests from the law.
Jeyapaul, who now handles school paperwork in a diocese office in southern India, has said he would willingly leave India and try to clear his name if the United States tried to extradite him.
In a separate case, a church official confirmed earlier this month that another priest convicted of fondling a 12-year-old altar girl in New York more than a decade ago had returned home to India where he still served as a priest.
The Rev. Francis X. Nelson, then a visiting priest at a church in Brooklyn, was sentenced to four months in prison in 2003 after the girl testified Nelson showed up at her grandmother's apartment uninvited and groped her.
In a telephone call with The Associated Press, Nelson denied he was the same priest who had served in New York and hung up.
However, his bishop, the Most Rev. Peter Remigius, confirmed that Nelson had returned to India after serving his jail term and continued to work as a priest in the bishop's office in his home diocese of Kottar in southern India.
"His conviction was finished, and he has finished his term," Remigius said. "He is not in charge of any parish. ... He is helping people who are alcoholic."
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