America's Roman Catholic bishops, overcoming earlier protests from some church leaders, said Tuesday they had overwhelmingly approved a second round of audits to measure how well U.S. dioceses are implementing sex abuse prevention policies.

The decision was made during the bishops' closed-door spiritual retreat this week in suburban Denver, where time was set aside to address the clergy sex abuse crisis and, separately, withholding Holy Communion from Catholic lawmakers at odds with church teachings.

The audit vote was 207-14, with one abstention, according to a news release from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Victim advocates and lay reformers had criticized the bishops for discussing the scandal in private, and questioned whether the resistance to more audits meant church leaders were abandoning their reforms.

However, several bishops had insisted that they remained committed to their toughened stance. The first round of audits last year found that 90 percent of dioceses were in compliance with the discipline policy the bishops mandated two years ago at the height of the abuse crisis. Four of the 195 U.S. dioceses were not audited for various reasons.

In Denver, the bishops also authorized a third study on the scandal, looking further at the psychological and sexual aspects of the crisis. Two previous studies, including one on the scope of the scandal, were released last February.

Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, chairman of the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sex Abuse, said in a statement that the vote was "a clear indication of our commitment" to protect young people.

Several bishops had said annual audits were time-consuming, expensive and unnecessary and should be done every few years instead.

But Flynn's committee and the National Review Board, the lay watchdog panel the bishops formed to monitor compliance with the discipline plan, had pushed for annual reviews.

The board had tangled publicly with bishops who resisted. The panel's leader, Illinois Justice Anne Burke, said in a statement after the vote: "The message is clear: Children will be safe from harm in the Catholic Church and the bishops and lay people will work on this together."