By Bill Raack, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The priest sex abuse victims' group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is calling on U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to open their closed-door summit in Colorado this week.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops is holding what it calls a spiritual assembly in Denver starting today (Monday) which is not open to the public or the media.
But David Clohessy of St. Louis, the head of the victims group SNAP, says at the very least the discussion of the clergy sex abuse crisis, should be made public.
"It's ironic and it's disappointing that two years ago in Dallas, when bishops wanted the whole world to believe they were tackling this problem, they invited everybody in to watch their meeting," Clohessy said Sunday. "Two years later in Denver, when the bishops are considering retreating from their promises, suddenly they want no one watching. And we're very troubled by this."
A spokesman for the bishops' conference says the summit was planned five years ago as a closed-door spiritual assembly and only a few pieces of business are on the agenda.
SNAP also held its national conference in Colorado; that meeting ended Sunday.