VATICAN – The Catholic Church needs "new legal structures of accountability" for bishops accused of sexual abuse or of negligence in handling abuse allegations, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago told the Vatican summit on safeguarding.

VATICAN – Only together, by humbly sharing their experiences, encouragement and corrective advice, can the bishops and leaders in the Catholic Church work to prevent the abuse of minors and help bring healing to survivors, said the head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India.

VATICAN – The abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is a call for bishops to unmask the deep-seated clericalism that placed protection of the institution of the church above the sufferings of victims, said the head of the council of Latin American bishops. 

QUEBEC CITY – The Catholic Church should not be afraid of crisis; through crisis, it will grow and spring new life, said Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe.

VATICAN – Catholics need to know that their leaders "mean business" when it comes to protecting minors from abuse, the Vatican's top abuse investigator told representatives of the world's bishops and religious orders.

VATICAN – Opening the Vatican summit on child protection and the clerical sexual abuse crisis, Pope Francis said, "The holy people of God are watching and are awaiting from us not simple, predictable condemnations, but concrete and effective measures" to stop abuse.

VATICAN – Abuse survivors and support groups were very clear about what they want the world's bishops, religious superiors, the pope and the Vatican to do to protect children and end clerical sexual abuse.

DUBLIN – Ahead of a major Vatican summit on the protection of minors, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Northern Ireland, has criticized Catholics who use the issue of clerical abuse to score points against people they disagree with in the church.

VATICAN – Catholics should speak up when things go wrong in the church, but theirs must be constructive criticism delivered with love, Pope Francis said, otherwise the devil is at work.

SOUTH BEND, Ind., – The University of Notre Dame has rescinded the honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree it conferred on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2008, becoming the latest of a growing number of schools who have rescinded honorary degrees from the defrocked former archbishop.

ROME – People must stop using homosexuals as scapegoats for the sexual abuse of children, two male survivors of abuse by priests told reporters.

OAKLAND, Calif. – The Diocese of Oakland, which serves two California counties in the East Bay area, published Feb. 18 a list of priests, deacons and religious brothers who have worked in the diocese and been credibly accused of abuse, dating back to the diocese's founding in 1962.

VATICAN – Twisted ideas of power and authority in the Catholic Church have contributed to the clerical sexual abuse crisis, leaders of religious orders said, but sometimes the positive "sense of family" in their own communities also made them slow to act.

VATICAN – When presented with an accusation that a priest has sexually abused a child, "whether it's criminal or malicious complicity and a code of silence or whether it is denial" on a very human level, such reactions are no longer tolerable, said the Vatican's top investigator of abuse cases.

VATICAN – Pope Francis has confirmed the removal from the priesthood of Theodore E. McCarrick, the 88-year-old former cardinal and archbishop of Washington.