Irish Bishops heavily indicted in Priests Child Sex Abuse

Report indicates that Irish Church stand accused of covering up sex abuse of minors:

Commentary:

A New Irish report heavily indicts the Irish Bishops of the Catholic Church of elaborate cover-up relative to children sexual abuse within the Irish Catholic Church. This report coming on the heels of another one regarding the modes of abuses of children confined to church institutions reflect another bad publicity and despicable stunt upon the image of the Catholic heritage in Ireland. This, too, has significant ramifications for the worldwide church, especially given the Irish exportation of her missionaries across the world into various global polities, including the United States, Africa, Asia, and even Australia, among other global spaces.

The impacts of these Irish missionaries can be greatly felt in many areas. However, the impact upon the formation of priestly candidates in seminaries across the world is to be particularly noted. Their examples, ethos, and ethics, as well as their lifestyles, have enormous influence upon these candidates and the diverse church communities that owe their emergence or sustenance to the missionary drive of the Irish missionaries. This is especially because of their ability to transmit and ingrain certain values and consciousness upon the psyche of the native clergy and Christians; including implanting particularly bad examples among these cleric in the area of priestly celibacy and shaping a screwed view of human sexuality in general.

Irish missionaries have been acute agents in the expansion of global Catholicism. Many, including Africans owes a grand appreciation for their enonmous and most times exemplifying modest lifestyles, often consistently in line with the values, orientation, and ethics of the Christian gospel and the doctrinal teachings of our beloved Church. The Irish dedication to social services, including their services to humanity in the arena of missionary and educational initiatives, forged a significant differences in the lives of individuals and fortunes of specific communities.

Bishop Joseph Shanahan is one example of an intrepid and courageously hardworking bishop whose influences extend across national spaces in Southeastern Nigeria, the Middle Belt to eastern Africa. Other Irish missionaries were also stellar witnesses to the ideals of self-abnegation and sacrificial giving of selves, internalizing and embodying sufferings living in arid conditions, in attestation to our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. For these acts, we congratulate and celebrate their positive examples.

In other cases, these missionaries were equally agents of abuses of Africans under their care. It is our hope that these were rare incidences. However, the recent case of an Irish-born Nigerian Archbishop, Richard Burke, of the St. Patrick's (Kiltegan) Society, accused of molesting a Nigerian woman beginning from the age of 14 in an hospital unit in Nigeria, and carried out over 20 years of relationship with her even while she was married, bespeaks volume as to the subtle nature of such abuses carried out by Irish missionaries, and also of the examples they transmitted to their Nigerian and African counterparts.  The instances of Catholic missionary abuses rendered by such African spiritual and literary writers like Patrick Malidoma Some in his book, Of Water and Spirit (cf. pages 109-111) would make one cringe with nausea and blush in shame of one's Catholic heritage..


The cases of the Central African Republic is another example. Herein, the Vatican acting against African clergy in two diocese, including removing their bishops, precipitated the African clergy to instance the sexual abuse scandals and bad instances of European clergy, also points to a scary manifestation of the bad models of priestly lifestyles which was perpetuated and reinforced over time by European missionaries in Africa and globally, where they carried out their works.

In some sector, it is believed that some of the missionaries were deliberately scurried to the mission territories in Africa and Asia dumped there steering them away from an enlightening European public, adverse to some of their perverting sexualities.

The Irish church widespread role in missionary work, and the fact that even in America the majority of priests accused in the minor sexual abuse scandals are of Irish origin or descent, necessitates that the Vatican authorities investigate the Irish role in the widespread globalized culture of priestly sexual abuses. This is not to downplay the enormous positive roles that many of these Irish missionaries have played in the evangelizing work of the Church. To these great sons and daughters of Ireland we stand in debted, but for those who tarnish the Irish and ecclesiastical images by their conscious acts, we are truly ashamed of their acts of shame.

Irish Catholic Church and Sexual Abuse Scandal: Damning Report Indicts Bishops of Cover-up:

News World news Ireland Irish church and police covered up child sex abuse, says report. Devastating report on abuse of children by clergy from 1975 to 2004 accuses church and Garda of colluding to cover up scandal
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Roman Catholic church in Ireland hid decades of child abuse by its leaders to protect the church's reputation, inquiry found. Photograph: Danilo Krstanovic/Reuters

Ireland's police colluded with the Catholic church in covering up clerical child abuse in Dublin on a huge scale, according to a damning report on decades of sex crimes committed by priests.

The devastating report on the sexual and physical abuse of children by the clergy in Ireland's capital from 1975 to 2004 accuses four former archbishops, a host of clergy and senior members of the Garda Síochána of a cover-up.

The three-volume report found that the "maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets" was more important than justice for the victims.

Four former archbishops in Dublin – John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan, who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara, who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell – were found to have failed to report their knowledge of child sexual abuse to the Garda from the 1960s to the 1980s. But the report added that all the archbishops of the diocese in the period were aware of complaints.

The report, launched today by the Irish justice minister, Dermot Ahern, also concluded that the vast majority of priests turned a "blind eye" to abuse, although some individuals did bring complaints to superiors, which were not acted upon.

The report, commissioned by the government, strongly criticises the Garda and says senior members of the force regarded priests as being outside their investigative remit. The relationship between some senior gardai and priests and bishops in Dublin was described as "inappropriate".

Rather than investigate complaints from children, gardai simply reported the matter to the Dublin Catholic diocese, the report says. The Garda Síochána is accused of connivance with the church in stifling at least one complaint of abuse and letting the alleged perpetrator flee the country.

Ahern said there should be no hiding place for abusers. "The persons who committed these dreadful crimes will continue to be pursued. They must come to know that there is no hiding place. That justice – even where it may have been delayed – will not be denied," he said.

He told a press conference: "I read the report as justice minister. But on a human level – as a father and as a member of this community – I felt a growing sense of revulsion and anger at the horrible, evil acts committed against children."

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre welcomed the report, saying it was "another acknowledgment of the abject failure of our society to take care of our children".

The report states that senior clerical figures covered up the abuse over nearly 30 years and that the structures and rules of the church facilitated that cover-up. It says that state authorities facilitated the cover-up by allowing the church to be beyond the reach of the law.

The Murphy Commission of Inquiry into the abuse of children in Dublin identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004. It also stated that since May 2004, 130 complaints against priests operating in the Dublin archdiocese had been made.

The report details the cases of 46 priests guilty of abuse as a representative sample of 102 priests within its remit. But it concludes that there was no evidence of an organised paedophile ring in the Dublin archdiocese, although it says there were worrying connections. One priest admitted abusing more than 100 children. Another said he had committed abuse every two weeks for more than 25 years.

The report highlights the case of a Father Carney and Father McCarthy who it claims in one case both abused the same child. The abuse by Carney often occurred at swimming pools, sometimes when he was accompanied by another priest.

The report states that it was not until 1995 that the archdiocese began to notify civil authorities of complaints of abuse. The commission concludes that in the light of this and other facts, every bishop's primary loyalty was to the church itself.

A move by the archdiocese to take out insurance against potential compensation claims arising from abuse, according to the report, proved knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost.

The Garda Síochána's current commissioner, Fachtna Murphy, said the report made for "difficult and disturbing reading, detailing many instances of sexual abuse and failure … to protect victims."

Pope Benedict was urged today to go to Ireland and apologise for his clergy's behaviour. John Kelly, of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said only a papal visit would exonerate the worldwide church in the abuse scandals.

Abuse reports

Since June 1994, when paedophile priest Father Brendan Smith was sentenced to four years in prison for the abuse of children in Northern Ireland, there have been three major reports into the abuse of children at the hands of Ireland's Catholic clergy:

• October 2005 the Ferns report detailed extensive child abuse and the cover-up of paedophile activity in the south-east of Ireland.

• November 2005 Judge Yvonne Murphy was appointed to head a commission of investigation into clerical child abuse in the Dublin diocese, which concluded today.
•May 2009 the Ryan report detailing abuse at orphanages and industrial schools run by Catholic religious orders across the state was published.

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St Patrick's Day parades around the world

15 Mar 2009:

Thousands of people join the festivities in Trafalgar Square prior to 17 March, the official day of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Various Irish organisations are holding similar parades in other cities throughout the world