A commission advising Pope Francis on the sexual abuse crisis will recommend that negligent clerics be held accountable regardless of their rank in the Church, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley said yesterday.

In many cases of abuse, most of which took place decades ago but surfaced in the past 15 years, bishops seeking to protect the Church’s reputation moved priests from parish to parish instead of defrocking them or handing them over to police.

The commission, made up of four men and four women from eight countries including an Irish woman who was a victim of abuse, met for the first time since its formation in March, holding talks with the pope and Vatican officials.

“We see ensuring accounta-bility in the Church as especially important,” the commission said in a statement.

O’Malley, known as a pioneer for a more open and forceful approach to tackling the scandal since he published a database of Boston clergy accused of sexual abuse of minors online in 2011, said a person’s rank in the Church should not be cause for special treatment or protection.

Our concern is to make sure there are clear protocols

“Our concern is to make sure that there are clear and effective protocols to deal with superiors in the Church who have not fulfilled their obligations to protect children,” he told reporters.

Victims’ groups have pressed the Vatican to hold bishops who either shielded abusers or were negligent in protecting children to account, along with abusers themselves.

O’Malley said accountability should apply to “every one in the Church regardless of what their status is... both for those who perpetrate the crime of sexual abuse and those who are negligent in child protection”.

The commission, which includes Baroness Sheila Hollins of Britain, will draw up protocols for the Pope to consider.

O’Malley said they would “lead to an open process that will hold people accountable to their responsibility to protect children” around the world.