Reports: 30 People Dead In Syria; Heavy Snow Socks London; Rivers Burst Banks In Australia; Church Works To Drop Abuse Cases; Preventing Priest Sex Abuse
WHITFIELD: All right, happening overseas this hour, another day of violence and death in Syria, at least 31 people reportedly died today in clashes with Syrian troops. An enormous crowd also packed the city of Homs to mourn the hundreds of people killed in what witnesses call a government ordered massacre. In the U.K. two to four inches of snow fell overnight. That's pretty heavy for London. Big fun for kids with sleds there, throwing snowballs, pretty big headache for travelers however. Heathrow Airport canceled about half its scheduled flights today. Troublesome weather in Australia as well in the form of high water. Heavy summer rains pushed rivers out of their banks in the eastern state of Queensland. Officials are warning thousands of residents to brace for what may be record breaking flooding. This week a federal judge will consider whether to throw out some priest sex abuse claims in the Milwaukee diocese. More than 550 people alleged they were abused. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy last January and these claims are part of that case. The archdiocese is asking the judge to throw out up to 95 percent of the claims saying this, that many of the claims were filed beyond the statute of limitations. The alleged abuse involves someone who wasn't a church employee and some victims already got settlements from the archdiocese. Many of the victims are furious at the archdiocese. It's trying to toss out those claims. Pope Benedict XVI wants all catholic churches to have guidelines in place to prevent clerical sexual abuse and respond appropriately when allegations are made. That's the focus of an international conference happening next week in Rome. More than 200 representatives from bishop's conferences and major religious orders around the world are invited. I want to bring our Vatican analyst, John Allen to talk more about this. So John, good to see you. From what I'm reading about all this, this conference seems very focused on action, finding solutions for how to deal with this issue. Is that what you're hearing?</s>JOHN ALLEN, CNN SENIOR VATICAN ANALYST: Yes, Fredricka, that's absolutely right. These would be the people coming together who are representing these bishop conferences and religious orders would be experts in child protection. That is people who are on the ground working for the church on this issue in various parts of the world trying to identify best practices in preventing, detecting and prosecuting abuse and trying to make sure that those best practices become a global standard. One of the problems here with the church's response is that supervision of personnel is handled locally. That is it's handled sort of parish by parish, diocese by diocese, religious order by religious order. It's always been difficult to come up with uniform global approach, but that's what this conference is trying to achieve.</s>WHITFIELD: Is it also the case that some alleged victims are planning to attend this conference? If so, what is their role going to be?</s>ALLEN: Yes, in fact, one of the first major speakers is going to be a victim of clerical abuse from Ireland. Ireland, of course, has had one of the most massive Catholic sex abuse crises anywhere in the world. This is a victim by the name of Maury Collins who has publicly talked about her experiences and has, in fact, been very sharply critical of what she sees as the church's failures to really get its hands around this. She has been invited to make one of the first presentations because organizers say they want to hear the voices of victims and the way they go about trying to fight this.</s>WHITFIELD: And is the Catholic Church in large part publicizing that there is this conference about to be under way to address the fact that membership worldwide in some parts is dropping significantly in the Catholic Church?</s>ALLEN: Well, I don't think it's quite as crass as that. I mean, first of all, the truth is that globally the Catholic Church is growing significantly. I mean, it's true it's losing membership in some parts of the west. But, you know, you take a place like Africa, the Catholic Church actually grew by 7,000 percent in Africa during the 20th Century. So I don't think trying to stem membership loss is the issue. I do think the church, however, realizes that it's taken a massive blow to its moral authority and to its public image. I do think they want to try to turn that around. But fundamentally, I think the motive for this conference is that church leaders want to try to make sure that the church is a safe place for children, and for everyone else for that matter, and try to put policies in place to make sure, as much as humanly possible that's the case.</s>WHITFIELD: John Allen, thanks so much for joining us from Rome. And in this country more than half of voting Catholics backed President Obama in 2008. But a new law about birth control might change that this year. Details on that next.