After months of anticipation, the Vatican issued a letter Monday that gives Roman Catholic bishops worldwide a year to come up with national guidelines on how to deal with the problem of child sexual abuse by priests.

The letter was the latest indication that Pope Benedict XVI has recognized sexual abuse as a global scourge, not an American aberration. Although the Vatican document was immediately castigated by church critics as toothless and vague, it was welcomed by others as a harbinger of progress.

“I think it’s a step forward,” said Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus of the Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh and former chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ panel on child protection. “It’s good to see the church requiring every bishops conference in the world to deal with what we now know is a worldwide problem.”

The letter, issued by Cardinal William J. Levada, the chief doctrinal officer of the Vatican, is not expected to have any effect on the Catholic Church in the United States because U.S. bishops adopted their own rules in 2002 for dealing with sexual abuse cases. Those “zero-tolerance” norms called for notifying civil authorities of abuse cases, removing abusive priests from ministry (but not necessarily the priesthood) and creating programs to safeguard young people and educate them about sexual predators.

Father Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman, said in a telephone interview that the Vatican letter was intended to establish “a certain homogeneity, a certain coherence” in the way the church deals with sexual abuse worldwide, while recognizing that bishops face very different political and legal climates in different parts of the world.

Levada gave the bishops until May 2012 to respond and may reject some guidelines if he believes they are inadequate, Lombardi said.