ST. LOUIS — Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, papal nuncio to the United States, warned the U.S. Catholic bishops June 19 that "some real problems within the church have been magnified to discredit the moral authority of the church."

"It is precisely in times such as these that as bishops we must stand together as men of faith," the nuncio told nearly 260 bishops gathered for a June 19-21 meeting at the Hyatt Regency at Union Station in St. Louis.

As the bishops convened in St. Louis, new controversies swirled over their handling of the scandal of sexual abuse of children by priests.

They devoted the afternoon session of the opening day to a closed-door meeting with researchers conducting a church-sponsored nationwide study of the extent of the problem and with members of their National Review Board and their child protection office. Both the office and board were formed last year to monitor their compliance with new national child protection standards. Later they were to hear a progress report from the head of their Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse.

Archbishop Montalvo built his remarks around the words from the Book of Wisdom, "As gold in the furnace he proved them."

Noting that fire can destroy or purify, he asked the bishops to look to the examples of recent popes and holy women such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta and two American saints, St. Frances Cabrini and St. Katharine Drexel.

Calling them examples of "religious zeal and unbending fidelity," he said, "They show us that in the worst and most difficult of times they refused to sit idle or to retreat to a place of isolation or seclusion. Nor would they quit or give up the fight to which they had been called."

The bishops' response to the current "difficult times," he said, must be grounded in faith, hope and charity, the virtues at the center of Christian life.

At later press conferences Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, declined reporters' efforts to get him to say who was meant by the nuncio's comment that some have magnified the church's problems to discredit its moral authority.

"The real problems -- and that's his term, the 'real problems' -- are being addressed," Bishop Gregory said.

"There are ways of looking at what we are doing that perhaps would say that we're not doing enough, we're not moving quickly enough," he said. "And that gives the impression in the minds of some that we are unwilling to move, that we are not willing to take the hard steps that are needed -- and that are being implemented."

"There's an awful lot that the Catholic Church in the United States is doing, is doing well, is doing effectively and is doing with great spirit and great generosity," he added. "And if anything, we'd like that to be recognized. I think that would be a fair interpretation of what he (the nuncio) was alluding to."