Meanwhile, Chile's national prosecuting authority says it has asked the government to submit a formal request to the Vatican for information about nine clergymen and lay workers who have been accused of sexual abuse of children.
Those on the Pennsylvania list would be removed from "any position of honor" throughout the Diocese of Harrisburg in central Pennsylvania, the diocese said in a statement on Wednesday.
The name of every bishop in the diocese in the past seven decades will be removed from buildings in the diocese, in recognition of their failure to properly deal with accusations of abuse, it added.
"I express our profound sorrow and apologise to the survivors of child sex abuse, the Catholic faithful and the general public for the abuses that took place and for those church officials who failed to protect children," Bishop Ronald Gainer of the Diocese of Harrisburg said in the statement.
Disclosures of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests and cover-ups by bishops burst into the headlines in 2002, when the Boston Globe reported widespread abuse in the Boston Archdiocese.
The report set off a global wave of investigations that found similar patterns at dioceses around the world.
RELEASING NAMES
In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court has ordered the release of an interim grand jury report on accusations of sexual abuse by clergy in six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania, including Harrisburg.
The report is due out this month, according to court papers.
The interim report will temporarily redact the names of some of the accused, who had filed court papers seeking to protect their identities, according to court papers.
In anticipation of the release of that report, the Diocese of Harrisburg released the identities of the 71 clergy members and seminarians accused of abuse because it was important for the public to know the names, Gainer said. Among those named, 37 were priests.
The diocese has not assessed, however, whether the people named, some of whom are dead, were guilty of abuse, Gainer said.
The Roman Catholic Church is dealing with accusations of sexual abuse in other parts of the US.
Pope Francis on Saturday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington, after American church officials said allegations that McCarrick sexually abused a 16-year-old boy decades ago were credible and substantiated.
CHILE REQUESTS VATICAN FILES
Chile's national prosecuting authority says it has asked the government to submit a formal request to the Vatican for information about nine clergymen and lay workers who have been accused of sexual abuse of children.
The prosecuting authority said in a statement that national prosecutor Jorge Abbott had asked the foreign minister to enact three International Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters requests in relation to cases from the capital Santiago, the city of Valparaiso and the southern region of Araucania.
It said it could submit additional requests in the future.
"The document was sent confidentially through the Unit of International Cooperation and Extraditions of the National Prosecutor's Office to Chile's Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that it can send the referral to the Vatican through diplomatic channels," the prosecutor's office said.
Chilean authorities have raided a number of Roman Catholic Church offices in Chile as part of investigations into accusations by prosecutors and victims groups that Church authorities covered-up or failed to properly investigate abuse.
The prosecutor's office said on Wednesday that it was investigating 38 accusations of sexual abuse against 73 bishops, clerics and lay workers in the Roman Catholic Church, involving 104 victims, most of whom were underage at the time of the alleged abuse
