Backgrounds of all active, retired, former or deceased clergy being checked for sex abuse.

The diocese's newly installed Bishop James Wall called for the probe, saying all priests who are serving or who have served will undergo a thorough background check and if any wrongdoing is exposed, the priest will be removed and the public given a full explanation why, Action 7 News said.

Officials insisted the investigation is not a witch hunt, but said the review is a way to restore confidence among the faithful and to reaffirm the integrity of those priests in good standing in the diocese, KOAT-TV said.

The diocese said it is about a third of the way through its background checks of active priests and that the findings will be released this fall, the station said.

"This is a much-belated, long overdue step that should have taken place years and years ago," David Clohessy, the St. Louis-based national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said in a news release. "We firmly believe the files will show that a number of church employees -- current and former, lay and ordained, living and deceased -- who concealed and ignored knowledge or suspicion of abuse."

Clohessy said the test of whether the bishop is sincere will be whether he disciplines them, according to the release.

The diocese said the review was prompted by an investigation into the Rev. John Boland, a priest at a Cuba, N.M., church, who was accused of child sexual abuse in 1983 when he was a priest in Arizona, then moved to New Mexico after the charges were reportedly dropped, KOAT-TV said.

The Boland case only recently came to light when Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who was serving as apostolic administrator in Gallup following last year's retirement of Bishop Donald Pelotte, was reviewing Boland's file in connection with his transfer to another assignment and discovered the 1983 allegations, according to an Albuquerque Journal story last month by Olivier Uyttebrouck.

Olmstead placed Boland on administrative leave in February, citing a U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops directive in 2002 requiring a diocese to investigate any abuse allegations as soon as they are discovered, the Journal reported.

Boland remains on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation into his case, according to KOAT-TV.