Audit praises diocese

WASHINGTON — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City is among 82 percent of dioceses nationally that are fully complying with new guidelines designed to prevent sexual abuse by priests and other leaders, according to an audit completed Tuesday.

However, victims groups said the audit and guidelines are flawed and merely amount to "long overdue minimal steps certainly not worthy of praise."

U.S. Catholic bishops two years ago, while meeting in Dallas to address widespread revelations of sexual abuse by priests, adopted new guidelines designed to help prevent such problems and to aid victims.

Teams of auditors — mostly former FBI agents, including some non-Catholics — visited 191 dioceses last year to evaluate progress toward implementing the guidelines.

In receiving a clean bill of health in the audit, the Diocese of Salt Lake City even received some special commendation for training and for its safe-environment program.

Auditors said, "The Diocese publicized, on April 14, 2003, standards of conduct for priests and deacons, as well as diocesan employees, volunteers and any other church personnel in positions of trust who have regular contact with children and young people."

It added that the diocese hired a national security company to perform background investigations on leaders.

Also, it hired a "well-qualified counselor" to oversee victim assistance, has written procedures for making complaints about sexual abuse readily available for church members, and established a program to ensure reports of abuse are referred to police and that church authorities cooperate with any investigations.

"We were happy to have received a commendation from the auditors," Michael Lee, director of pastoral operations, said on behalf of Monsignor Terrence Fitzgerald, vicar general of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese.

The Salt Lake Diocese had two cases of sexual abuse involving priests in the courts during 2003. In November, a Catholic priest who formerly worked at Ogden's St. Joseph Catholic Church left for his native Colombia before prosecutors could sentence him. Mario Arbelaez Olarte had pleaded no contest to enticing a minor over the Internet for sex before he left the country.