Vatican City ? The Vatican gave its approval Monday to the revised U.S. bishops’ policy to combat sex abuse in the clergy, declaring the need to restore the image of the priesthood in a scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

Approval had been expected after differences in the original plan were worked out by a joint U.S.-Vatican commission in November.

The Vatican released a letter from Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pledging the Holy See’s support to “combat and to prevent such evil.”

The Vatican announcement came three days after Pope John Paul II accepted the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop of Boston, removing a figure who was a flash point for victims’ groups, lay Catholics and some priests.

Re said “it appears necessary to devote every available resource to restoring the public image of the Catholic priesthood.”

The Italian prelate, who heads the Congregation of Bishops, called sex abuse “one of the most serious offenses” a priest can commit and noted that the American policy can lead to dismissal from the priesthood.

Touching on some of the Vatican’s original objections, Re also said the revised policy protects “inviolable human rights” of the accused.

Re said that the Vatican – together with the bishops of the United States – “feels duty-bound” to defend “the good name of the overwhelming majority of priests and deacons.”

The cardinal asked the U.S. bishops to continue their meetings with the heads of religious orders who have raised issues of concern about their members coming under the policy.

Re’s letter stressed that the Vatican will not tolerate sex abuse crimes against children, saying that the pope has affirmed “the Holy See’s aversion to this betrayal of the trust which the faithful rightly place in Christ’s ministers, and to ensure that the guilty will be appropriately punished.”

“As the Holy Father has affirmed on various occasions, the Holy See is spiritually united to the victims of abuse and to their families and encourages particular concern for them on the part of the bishops, priests and the whole Catholic community.”