VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The take-away message from a Vatican-backed symposium on clerical sex abuse was clear: Victims, truth and justice come first. And the church can no longer wait for a crisis to erupt before it begins to address the scandal of abuse.

“We do not need to wait for a bomb to explode. Preventing it from exploding is the best response,” said Philippine Archbishop Luis Tagle.

The archbishop of Manila was one of more than 200 bishops, cardinals, priests, religious and laypeople who attended a landmark symposium Feb. 6-9 in Rome. The conference aimed to inspire and educate bishops’ conferences around the world as they seek to comply with a Vatican mandate to establish anti-abuse guidelines by May.

U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that issued the mandate, said more than 4,000 cases of sexual abuse have been reported to the doctrinal office the past decade. Those cases revealed that an exclusively canonical response to the crisis has been inadequate, he said, and that a multifaceted and more proactive approach by all bishops and religious orders is needed.

Countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany are among those with the most comprehensive and binding guidelines or norms, Cardinal Levada said. “But in many cases such response came only in the wake of the revelation of scandalous behavior by priests in the public media,” he added.