WASHINGTON — The U.S. Catholic bishops last week overwhelmingly approved revised norms to deal with removal from ministry of any priest or deacon who has sexually abused a minor.

By a vote of 246-7 they adopted the new document, worked out two weeks earlier at a Vatican meeting.

Shortly afterward, the bishops overwhelmingly approved revisions to the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," originally adopted at their June meeting in Dallas, to bring the charter into accord with the revisions of the norms.

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, who led a two-hour discussion of the new norms, stressed that the revisions worked out in Rome by four U.S. bishops and four top Vatican officials strengthened the earlier version the bishops had adopted in Dallas along with the charter.

The new document keeps in place the victim assistance ministry, review boards and cooperation with civil authorities contained in the original norms, he said.

The major change, he said, was to add the use of church trials, along with the administrative actions a bishop could take, to remove an offending priest from ministry.

The new norms offer the possibility of lifting the statute of limitations on a case-by case basis for those cases otherwise too old to prosecute. Cardinal George expressed the belief that the large majority of existing cases of child sex abuse by priests fall into that category.

In the debate on the revised norms, bishop after bishop stood to praise the revisions as a refinement and strengthening of what the bishops had done in Dallas.

At the end of the debate on the revised charter, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles urged the canonical affairs committee of the bishops' conference to study a proposal to ask Rome to change general church law so that sexual abuse of a minor would be an "irregularity" in law, barring the offender from being ordained or, if already ordained, barring him from ministry.

Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, Ill., said if such a recommendation is sent to the Holy See, it should come from the whole body of bishops. The proposal was referred to the canonical affairs committee for study.

That committee was also asked to study the possibility of developing step-by-step model processes and document forms to help bishops, especially in smaller dioceses, handle the appropriate legal processes in accord with the requirements of church law.

Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger of Evansville, Ind., referred to the case of a priest who abused a minor many years ago but is widely recognized as fully repentant and reformed. He said he removed that priest after the Dallas meeting but continued to hope that there could be a means of reinstating him. Without that possibility, he said, he had to oppose the norms.

Cardinal George said that possibility does not exist. "I think we are committed since Dallas to removal from ministry in every one of these cases," he said.

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan of Brooklyn, N.Y., repeated concerns he had expressed in Dallas that the charter and norms drive a wedge between a bishop and his priests.

Archbishop Stefan Soroka of the Ukrainian Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia strongly urged that where the canons of the Code of Canon Law are cited in the norms the parallel canons in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches should be cited as well, since the Eastern Catholic churches of the United States are also governed by the norms.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., said that process was under way and before the norms are sent to Rome the appropriate citations of Eastern church law will be added.

Bishop Sean P. O'Malley of Palm Beach, Fla., called the charter and norms "a corrective to an approach in the past that proved very inadequate." Approval of the norms, he added, demonstrates that the application of the charter is not just a matter of relying on the good will of bishops, but it allows the bishops "to say we indeed have a national policy."

At a follow-up press conference, Bishop Lori said the bishops anticipate receiving Vatican confirmation of the norms, giving them the force of church law throughout the United States, before the end of the year.

Bishop Doran said it may take about 18 months to gear up U.S. church courts, training lawyers and judges, in order to handle the expected cases resulting from the ability under the revised norms to bring offending priests to trial.

When a reporter asked if the revised charter and norms constituted "zero tolerance," Cardinal George said, "Yes."

To a reporter's claim that some bishops have actively recruited homosexuals for the priesthood, he said, "We don't know of any bishops who have gone out of their way to recruit homosexuals. I don't know of any bishop who would hesitate to remove from their ranks (as priests of the diocese) those who are committed to a homosexual lifestyle."

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington said in an interview, "We have done what we promised to do. We have been faithful to the decisions we made in Dallas. And thanks be to God, the Holy See has said, 'You're on track; we'll go along with that.'"