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Members of Long Island’s gay community gathered last night in Deer Park to discuss how best to combat leaders who they say are unfairly blaming them in the wake of strong words by several church and community officials linking homosexuality to pedophilia.  Meeting organizer Tom Hroncich and other activists say they are angered by a series of statements by church and community leaders linking homosexuality to pedophile priests.  Hroncich, who is publisher of the local gay and lesbian magazine Outlook Long Island, said, I find it ironic that leaders of

America’s Catholic cardinals returned home yesterday from Rome, amid a storm of criticism of their proposals for dealing with the priest sex abuse scandal rocking the church.  Edward Cardinal Egan told The Post Our meeting was very positive, there was much progress made, and a better understanding of the problems and how we must correct them.  But others are not so sure the meeting among the cardinals, top bishops and Pope John Paul II will do anything to solve the problem of child molestation by priests.

Newsday/Carol Eisenberg

Last night America’s Roman Catholic cardinals said they would propose a special process todismiss sexually abusive priests to avoid grave scandal in the future and to safeguard the commongood of the church. But they stopped short of proposing a much-discussed zero tolerancepolicy.

(Vatican City)

Bishop William Murphy, Long Island’s tough-talking Catholic bishop, said he will immediately fire and try to defrock any child-molesting priest he catches – a dramatic change to his diocese’s long-standing sex-abuse policy.  The policy revision comes as the Archdiocese of New York agreed to release sex-abuse victims from confidentiality agreements required in civil-case settlements.

Andrew Dodwell, 42, of 19 Emery Street, Hempstead, was arraigned yesterday morning in First District Court in Hempstead on charges that he raped and sodomized a 15 year old girl.  He is being held on $50,000 bond or $10,000 cash bail.  He is charged with third-degree rape and third-degree sodomy.  Dodwell raped and sodomized the girl in a New Cassel home on Friday around 8 p.m.  The girl told her mother, who then notified the police.  Dowdell is an acquaintance of the girl’s family.

(Hempstead, New York)

On April 23-24, 2002, an extraordinary meeting was held in the Vatican between the Cardinals of the United States and the leadership of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops and the heads of several offices of the Holy See on the subject of the sexual abuse of minors.

The meeting was called with three goals in mind:

– on the part of the American bishops, to inform the Holy See about the difficulties which they have faced in recent months,

– on the part of the Roman Dicasteries, to