After 3 years of abuse crisis, U.S. bishops' head ready for a retreat

Published: 2004-10-22

ROME (CNS) -- After dealing with the sex abuse issue for almost his entire three-year term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory said he's ready for a retreat. He will leave to his successor a number of long-term challenges, including renewal of seminary programs, church financial problems, outreach to victims, and review and possible revision of the U.S. sex abuse norms. "It will be a healing, strengthening and comforting service that the next president (of the bishops' conference) will have to provide," Bishop Gregory said in an interview with Catholic News Service Oct. 21. "I had to be engaged in immediate response," he said. "But the next president will have to come in and look at the long-term structures that need to be put into place." Bishop Gregory, who heads the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., was in Rome for the last of his semiannual meetings with Pope John Paul II and other Vatican officials.

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