(CNN) -- As the priest abuse scandal continues to roil Europe, a growing chorus of American Catholics pressed the Vatican to adopt the same reforms that the U.S. Catholic Church did in 2002, following revelations of a similar abuse scandal.
The American reforms, adopted by the U.S. Catholic bishops the same year the Boston, Massachusetts, scandal broke, include a zero tolerance approach toward priests who are known to have abused children; mandatory reporting of abuse allegations to authorities; and the creation of local boards of lay Catholics to respond to such allegations.
"The tragedy is that the Europeans didn't get their house in order when they saw what was happening in the United States because they thought [abuse by priests] was an American problem," said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown University. "If they had adopted our reforms, they would be in a much better situation today."
Though the 2002 reforms were adopted as binding church law in the United States, neither the Vatican nor the Catholic Church in Europe or other parts of the world followed suit. This week, Reese and other prominent Catholics began calling for the Vatican to do so.
Vatican's troubles grow "There is no need to reinvent the solution to the problems in Europe," said Nick Cafardi, dean emeritus of Duquesne University's School of Law, who has advised the U.S. church on abuse. "We already have one, and it's the canon law in the United States. It needs to be made law for the entire world."
Bishops' conferences in some European countries have already informally adopted certain American reforms, particularly the so-called one strike and you're out rule for abusive priests. "In many European nations, the groundwork has already been laid," said John Allen, CNN's Vatican analyst.
But it's difficult to know if the Vatican will follow the American church's lead, even as the abuse allegations have been piling up in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. That's because bishops generally avoid publicly giving advice to the pope -- the lone church official who could institute a global church reform.
