The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has appointed a new chairman and five new members on the National Review Board for the protection of children.

The USCCB president, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., announced the appointments in Washington Oct. 15.

He named Nicholas P. Cafardi, dean of the law school of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and a charter member of the two-year-old board, as chairman. He will serve through the conclusion of his term on the board in June 2005.

The new members, all appointed to three-year terms that will end Oct. 31, 2007, are:

---Patricia O'Donnell Ewers, an educational consultant who was president of Pace University in New York from 1990 to 2000.

---Dr. Angelo P. Giardino, vice president for clinical affairs at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.

---Ralph I. Lancaster Jr., an attorney at the Pierce Atwood law firm in Portland, Maine.

---Judge Michael R. Merz, a federal magistrate of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Ohio, in Dayton, Ohio.

---Joseph P. Russoniello, dean of the San Francisco Law School and senior counsel and resident in the San Francisco office of the law firm Cooley Godward LLP.

Cafardi, who has degrees in both civil law and canon law, succeeds the board's founding chairman, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, and Justice Anne M. Burke of the Illinois Court of Appeals, who served as interim chair from June 2003, when Keating left, until her departure from the board this fall.

The new members replace Keating; Burke; Robert S. Bennett, an attorney in the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom in Washington; William R. Burleigh, board chairman and former CEO of the media conglomerate E.W. Scripps Co.; and Leon E. Panetta, director of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy in Monterey Bay, Calif., and a former White House chief of staff under President Clinton.

Bishop Gregory said the board has been "vitally important in assisting the bishops of the United States in dealing with the crisis of the sexual abuse of minors within the church."

The all-lay board was established by the U.S. bishops at their landmark June 2002 meeting in Dallas to provide an independent review and critique how well U.S. Catholic dioceses were dealing with sexually abusive priests and their victims and what policies, personnel and programs the bishops were establishing to create a safe environment for children throughout the church.

The board's formation was part of the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" that the bishops adopted in Dallas in response to what was then a still-burgeoning crisis over the number of priests across the country who had molested children and especially the number of them who had been left in ministry or returned to ministry after church officials learned of their actions.

In its tumultuous first two years the board assisted in establishment of the bishops' national Office of Child and Youth Protection.

It interviewed scores of experts with a wide range of perspectives on the nature of child sexual abuse and the factors that may have contributed to priests engaging in such abuse. Last February it issued a 150-page report on its findings, sharply criticizing many past practices in the church and what it saw as continuing problems in many areas.

It also reviewed and approved the diocese-by-diocese reports of teams of outside compliance auditors who visited nearly every diocese in 2003 to conduct an independent assessment of its policies, programs and practices for child protection and for dealing with allegations of clerical sexual abuse, the priests accused and the alleged victims.

The board also objected vigorously to a decision last spring by the bishops' Administrative Committee that would have postponed a second round of diocesan audits until 2005. The charter calls for annual reports on diocesan compliance to be reviewed and approved by the board, and the board said new audits were needed in 2004 for the mandated 2004 report. The board's objections led the bishops to address the issue at a national gathering in June and decide the second round of audits would be conducted in 2004.

More recently, when board members received a list of nominees to replace the outgoing members, they objected to the appearance of the name of a nun on the list. That name did not make the final cut of new members.

Although the charter does not exclude priests or nuns from board membership, board members felt the board's reputation for independence was at stake.

In two mid-September speeches in Chicago the interim chair, Burke, asked, "How much freedom and independence do you think we would have if there were members of the clergy on the board?"

She added that board members often have had to "raise 'holy hell'" to get their points across to the bishops.

When the 13-member board was originally set up, none of the members was assigned a definite term. As they began to complete the monumental initial tasks of their mandate, they decided to begin leaving the board on a staggered schedule so that new members can be appointed to fixed three-year terms with about one third of the board being replaced each year.

---CNS