BALTIMORE — After the more than 270 members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops elected their new president in Baltimore, some observers of the nation’s most powerful Catholic body hailed the choice of Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio as a healthy compromise between the conservative and progressive factions that have emerged into public view in recent years.
Others were less sure about the longtime archbishop of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA — and they gathered Wednesday outside the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, the site of the bishops’ annual conference, to make their voices heard.
With icy winds gusting in from the Inner Harbor, representatives of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, held signs and announced three principal demands of the incoming conference president: pledge to stop the church from using funds to fight legislation that would give survivors more time to seek justice against abusers; call out a minority of bishops who have declined to make public the names of credibly accused priests, and create systems for monitoring the behavior of those have been separated from the church over sexual misconduct.
