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Cardinals Arrive in Rome

Aired April 22, 2002 - 10:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check in now with our Rome bureau chief, Alessio Vinci, who checks in from Rome. He is covering this not unprecedented, but unusual meeting of the pope and the archbishops, who have gone now from the U.S. over to Rome -- hello, Alessio.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF: Hello to you, Leon. Well, most of the American cardinals have arrived here earlier this morning. They are telling us, telling reporters that their mission here is to restore some kind of credibility in the American church. They hope that this mission will at least be able to restore that credibility.

And also, they seem the opportunity to have a frank and open discussion with the top Vatican officials, a discussion that will range on a variety of issues, including what exactly to do when, for example, the first cases of sexual abusers emerge in one perish, what to do with the priests who are accused of sexually abusing children, what do with them, to defrock them or to move into other parishes, perhaps where there is no children.

So all of these issues will be discussed at this meeting, which will begin tomorrow, Tuesday, and will go on for about two days. We do understand that the meeting will be open by a prayer. The pope then will also participate in the early part of the first day. The cardinals will each have the opportunity to speak. The pope will have a brief speech.

And throughout this meeting, they will issue -- they will -- sorry -- discuss a series of guidelines, which then the U.S. bishops will bring back to the United States at their Bishop's Conference in Dallas and perhaps make some of those guidelines public and more binding for the entire U.S. Catholic Church in order to deal with this problem.

Now, you know that one of the cardinals that is at the center of this scandal is Cardinal Law of Boston, as we have seen from the report earlier from Michael Okwu. Cardinal Law arrived earlier this morning here. He was mobbed by -- was met by a mob of reporters. Cardinal Law said that we should not expect great concrete measures coming out this of meeting -- that this is merely a consultative way to address these issues, and then more concrete steps will be taken later on at this conference in Dallas.

Now, the "Los Angeles Times" this morning is reporting that at least one cardinal and one U.S. bishop are going to address the issue of his resignation during this meeting. However, not all the cardinals traveling to Rome and who will participate in this meeting agree that Cardinal Law has to resign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARD. THEODORE MCCARRICK, WASHINGTON: Cardinal Law has been saying the trouble began on his watch, and he wants it fix it. And so I think we'll give him a chance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VINCI: Well, Cardinal Law met about ten days ago with Pope John Paul II here at the Vatican, right here behind me. At end of that meeting, Cardinal Law issued a statement saying that the issue of resignation did come up in their conversation. However, from top Vatican officials here, we are hearing that at least for now, for the time being, the issue of his resignation or the resignations of any other cardinal is not on the table. But the most important thing right now is to discuss the main problem, which is the pedophilia and the sex abuse scandal. And then after that, perhaps, other issues will be dealt with.

But for the time being, the Vatican officials and the U.S. cardinals want to concentrate on this pressing problem -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thanks, Alessio -- Alessio Vinci reporting live for us from Rome.

We'll have more from Rome coming up in just a bit. We'll be joined by an expert who knows quite well the inner workings of the Vatican. We'll talk about this couple of days of meetings that are right before us now.

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