On Tuesday, the Bishops’ review board will release their audit of dioceses’ compliance with the policy on abuse adopted two years ago. This will be the easy one. The hard one to spin will be the report, scheduled to be released in February, tallying the numbers of abusers and victims in Catholic dioceses over the past few decades.

The February report will be the first definitive tally of the scope of the scandal — how many offenders and victims and the financial toll — based on comprehensive but confidential surveys of every diocese conducted by the John Jay College of Justice.

Bishops are not required to release the results of the John Jay survey in individual dioceses. Although more than a dozen dioceses have released some details already, other bishops said they could not do so without violating state personnel laws or pledges of confidentiality made to victims.

Gregory has frequently said that he expects the February numbers will be “startling” and “painful” but that he sees this self-assessment as a bold effort that should be emulated by any group that deals with young people.

It’s unlikely that even this tally will include all recently filed suits. In California, as many as 800 claims — involving about 200 priests who served over the past 60 years — were filed by a Dec. 31 deadline for a one-year extension on the statute of limitations.

Victims’ advocates say these cases will shift public outrage from Boston to Los Angeles, the nation’s largest diocese.

The first report will be available at the bishops’ website after 10am tomorrow.

There will be lots of stories, and I won’t be even trying to link all of them, so you might want to depend on the News Tracker (linked at right) for that.