HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s highest court said its decision last week to hold up the release of a major grand jury report on sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses is the result of challenges filed by “many individuals” cited in the report.

The Supreme Court said in an opinion released Monday that most of those individuals claim they are discussed in the report in a way that would violate reputational rights guaranteed by the state constitution. They also say they have a due process right to be heard by the grand jury.

“A number of the petitioners asserted that they were not aware of, or allowed to appear at, the proceedings before the grand jury,” the court said in the unanimous, unsigned opinion.

The high court said the attorney general’s office did not object to a brief hold on the report.

A spokesman for the state prosecutors’ office said they were opposed to what he called an effort to “permanently suppress the voices of victims of widespread sexual abuse.”

A grand jury spent two years investigating sex abuse by clergy in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton.