“It shows that the scourge (of sex abuse) is not limited to any one faith and certainly not limited to priests,” he said. “It’s in organizations, in universities, all over the place, in families and, yes, in priests.”

Dolan said the Church’s own sex abuse scandal “makes us a little timid about wanting to give advice — glass houses and all that.” But he said the Church’s experience with providing safe environment training to help children and their parents, as well as clergy and Church volunteers, become more aware of the warning signs of child sex abuse has been “phenomenally advantageous” over the past decade.

“We’ve got a long way to go, but we have made major strides.

“To our deep regret we have not been a good example of how to deal with this in the past,” the archbishop said. “We would like to be a good example in the future.”