BALTIMORE—The Vatican barred Roman Catholic bishops in the U.S. from taking action to confront sex abuse, frustrating church leaders from across the country who had gathered here for their annual meeting aiming to address the crisis.

The night before the conference, the U.S. bishops’ leadership received an order from the Vatican forbidding them from taking any steps on sex abuse this year and forcing them to wait until after a global summit on the issue scheduled for February.

The Vatican’s move exposes a deep and growing rift between Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops over how to handle the sex-abuse problem.

“It makes it look like we don’t care,” Bishop Thomas Daly, of Spokane, Wash., said of the delay. “No reason is good enough for the laypeople who expect the bishops to act.…How are we going to explain this to the people back in our dioceses?”

Bishops had been eager to address the sex-abuse crisis this week, in part to send a message to angry Catholics around the country that they are taking the issue seriously.