Amnesty International has been working in recent weeks to highlight the impact of the planned withdrawl by the UN from Eastern Chad. Much more on this can be read at the Amnesty International Ireland site. Amnesty International has a research mission on the ground in Chad at the moment and one of my colleagues, Alex Neve for Amnesty International Canada is a member of the team. Alex has blogged about the mission and I thought his perspective on this was compelling and so decided to add it here. If you feel strongly about this, and I hope yo do, the please follow the link... [Read more]

An edited version of this article appeared in The Independent newspaper in the UK on April 19, 2010. Given all we now know about the cover up of clerical sexual abuse by Rome it’s difficult to see what is significant about the Pope’s meeting with a small number of victims in Malta over the weekend. I can fully appreciate that it may have been meaningful to those who chose to meet the Pope, but it hardly represents a major breakthrough in addressing the global scandals engulfing the Roman Catholic Church. One might have expected that such meetings, as part of a meaningful... [Read more]

There have been times over this past week when I have momentarily thought that maybe, just maybe the Vatican was finally being forced to confront the truth about the reality of clerical sexual abuse and the cover up it perpetrated of such heinous crimes by clergy. I admit I remained sceptical as I read about how the tone of comments emanating from the Vatican seemed to suggest a significant shift in thinking and approach, but I demanded of myself that I remained open to the possibility, no matter how remote, that change was possible. In what seemed a very significant development... [Read more]

The last twenty four hours have seen further dramatic developments in relation to the Roman Catholic Church and its management of child sexual abuse by its priests. Last night Associated Press revealed yet another case which raises questions about Pope Benedict XVI’s involvement in the management of paedophile priests. AP published a letter which seems to show that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted pleas from a US Diocese to defrock a California-based priest who had sexually assaulting children, citing concerns including ‘the good of the universal church’.... [Read more]

An edited version of this article was published in Th Independent newspaper (UK) on March 22nd 2010. On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI published his letter to the Irish Church on the issue of child abuse. What was necessary seemed clear. As Pope, acknowledge the cover up by Roman Catholic Church of the rape and abuse of children by priests, take responsibility for it, and show how you will ensure it never happens again. But the letter failed to do any of this. There was no acceptance of responsibility for the now established cover up, no plan to ensure that across the global... [Read more]