SOUTH PORTLAND – Maine’s Roman Catholic diocese is falling short in conducting background checks on all volunteers and employees and providing sexual abuse prevention training for minors in the church’s care, according to an audit released Tuesday.

Bishop Richard Malone announced the findings of an outside audit that assessed compliance with the Catholic church’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, commonly known as the Dallas Charter.

The audit, conducted in December, found that the diocese has completed background checks on 87 percent of the 4,570 volunteers and employees in its database, Malone announced at a news conference at the Holy Cross School. It also found that 33 percent of the children at its schools or in its religious education programs had undergone sexual abuse prevention training.

As a result of the findings, Malone has ordered that all background checks be completed by April 18. If the paperwork isn’t done by then, employees without background checks will be put on unpaid leaves of absence and volunteers will be prohibited from volunteering in any capacity.

Schools and Sunday school programs are mandated to begin prevention training immediately during school classes and religious education programs, Malone said. The training must be completed by June 1.

Protecting children is the church’s highest priority, Malone said, and the failures weaken the church’s effort to prevent future abuse, its commitment to victims of past abuse and its credibility within the community.

“I cannot stress enough my own personal resolve that these deficiencies be rectified throughout the diocese with utmost urgency,” he said.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted the Dallas Charter in 2002 in the wake of the priest sexual abuse scandal that rocked the church.

The charter contains 17 articles dealing with how the church works with victims of sexual abuse, responds to allegations of abuse and protects children in the future.

An outside company each year audits the Catholic dioceses around the country to assess their compliance with the policy.

The national group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said something’s wrong when the diocese continues to fall short four years after the church adopted the Dallas Charter.

“Hundreds of kids haven’t yet gotten basic abuse prevention training, and hundreds of employees haven’t yet had simple background checks,” said Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director. “This is inexcusable and is one more sign that bishops place little priority on protecting children, despite years and years of horrific abuse and coverup.”

Of the 13 areas audited, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, which has 234,000 members, was found to be in compliance with 11.

Regarding the background checks, Malone said 686 people in the church’s database have not had background checks. Of that total, roughly half are believed to be inactive in the church, he said.

Of the checks the church has conducted so far, 238 people came back with criminal records, said Tom Deignan, a deacon who is in charge of the diocese’s background checks. Of those, nine were relieved of their duties because of criminal records that included sexual assault and theft.

Church officials said they were confident nobody was trying to evade the background checks.

“It’s more a matter of compliance than defiance,” Malone said.

Outside the school, two critics of the diocese’s handling of priest sexual abuse repeated their call for Malone to release the names of all Maine priests who have been accused of abuse.

Paul Kendrick and Harvey Paul said more can be done to protect children than simply improving background checks and stepping up prevention training programs.

While the names of many abusive priests have been released, Malone has said he is not prepared to release the names of all accused priests without some type of due process, either through the church or through civil authorities.

That doesn’t satisfy Kendrick.

“We don’t think it’s complicated,” he said. “We think kids have due process, too.”