Appointed to lead the Catholic Church there a decade ago, he has been hailed for dealing with a backlog of cases of priestly sexual abuse.

Still, many wish to understand the root cause of priestly sexual abuse.

The crisis of priestly sexual abuse, in short, has exposed a crisis of leadership.

But in interviews with Catholics across the country, many priests, theologians, criminal prosecutors and victims of priestly abuse said they had hoped for more.

The scandal of priestly sexual abuse calls for Cahill's most tragic eloquence rather than raw invective.

Some scandals, like the priestly abuse of children, cause nausea.

The Dallas charter obligates bishops to report all accusations of priestly sexual abuse to civil authorities and cooperate in law enforcement investigations.

Those measures fell short of the hopes of many advocates for victims of priestly abuse, who dismissed them as "tweaking" rather than a bold overhaul.

Several bishops have already turned over their files on priestly abuse, but most involved cases too old to be prosecuted.

It would later become clear that Cardinal Law did not believe in dialogue with victims of priestly abuse, either.