WASHINGTON -- The clergy sex abuse crisis in the U.S. Catholic Church took a new turn April 15 as it was revealed that the Vatican scheduled a Rome summit on the issue with U.S. cardinals and top officers of the bishops' conference.

They were to be in Rome April 22-25 to meet with Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials.

The summit was called as Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston faced new calls to resign because of a loss of trust over his past reassignment of priests accused of sexual abuse of minors.

In a faxed letter to all his priests April 12, Cardinal Law said he did not intend to resign, but many observers did not take the letter as a final word on the topic. The Boston Globe, the city's leading daily, issued a second editorial call for the cardinal's resignation April 14.

Meanwhile, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic New Service at the end of a week of meetings in Rome that the pope "assured us of his willingness and desire to assist us in any way we find necessary."

He said that at a working lunch April 9 the pope was especially concerned with the spirit of U.S. Catholics in the face of the scandals, which have rocked the Boston Archdiocese and much of the nation for the past three months.

Interviewed in Rome April 13, Bishop Gregory said one of the key policy issues the U.S. bishops have yet to resolve is the question of reassignment of priests who have committed sexual abuse. The bishops "are not all on the same page" on that issue, he said, but he suspected there was growing sentiment toward permanently removing such priests from all forms of public ministry.

In a brief exchange two days later with CNS in Washington, he confirmed that the then-not-yet-announced summit in Rome was being called to address the issue of clergy sexual abuse.

The steady spread of the scandal beyond the Boston area continued in the first half of April. More bishops removed priests from posts while reassessing past sex abuse allegations against them. More prosecutors began asking dioceses for their records of past allegations. And hundreds of individuals came forward with new allegations that they had been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

In California, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony was cleared by police of an allegation by a woman with a history of mental illness that the cardinal may have molested her more than 30 years ago when she was in high school in Fresno. The claim about an alleged incident at the school was vague and police said interviews with former staff and students produced nothing to substantiate it. Cardinal Mahony denied ever molesting anyone.

New York Cardinal Edward M. Egan, former bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., came under new fire in mid-April over his handling of abuse cases during his time in Bridgeport in the 1990s. As Connecticut newspapers investigated details of those cases, they contended the cardinal protected priests and did not pursue allegations as vigorously as he should have.

In response to one news report, Bridgeport and New York church officials issued a joint statement denying that the cardinal had known that a teen-age girl impregnated by a priest was a still a minor under the state's statutory rape law when the sexual relationship began. In an April 14 editorial the Connecticut Post, Bridgeport daily, said Cardinal Egan should resign.

Elsewhere around the nation:

-- Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, N.Y., gave Brooklyn and Queens district attorneys files on 15 priests accused of sexual misconduct in the past, reversing his previous position against turning over such files. Law enforcement officials expected additional files to follow as the diocese worked through its records.

-- In the neighboring Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., the Suffolk County district attorney said he would convene a grand jury to probe the diocesan files of such cases within his jurisdiction.

-- One lawyer handling Boston sex abuse cases told reporters in mid-April that since January he has taken on 250 more cases of claims against Boston priests; two others said they have each taken on 100 new clients alleging abuse by Boston priests.

-- Father Bryan M. Kuchar, 36, a St. Louis archdiocesan vocations official and associate at a South St. Louis parish, was arrested April 10 on six charges of statutory sodomy for alleged sexual assault on a 14-year-old boy in 1995.

-- Viatorian Father Paul M. Desilets, 78, was indicted April 12 by a grand jury in Worcester County, Mass., on charges of molesting 18 boys while serving at a church in Bellingham between 1978 and 1984. Because he moved back to his native Canada in 1984, the usual statute of limitations for prosecuting such cases was stopped at that time, according to law enforcement officials.

-- A Sonoma County, Calif., jury began deliberations April 12 in the seventh week of the criminal trial of Father Don Kimball, a long-suspended priest of Santa Rosa, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in 1977 and molesting a 13-year-old girl in 1981.

-- The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled April 12 that a man who says he was sexually abused as a child at a Catholic orphanage in the early 1980s cannot pursue his lawsuit for damages because the statute of limitations had run out before he filed the complaint.

-- The head of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association called April 12 for church officials throughout the state to report immediately to law enforcers any clergy misconduct allegation that might be a crime.

-- A Greensburg, Pa., diocesan review board looking into former sexual abuse allegations against eight priests decided at least two of the cases, both involving retired priests, presented enough evidence to warrant barring them from all public ministry.