An opinion piece first published in the Irish Daily Mail on Jan 20th 2010 To find out more or to support Amnesty International click here. On the 22nd of July 2002 a Gulfstream jet, registration number N379P, landed at Shannon Airport. It was owned by Premier Executive Transport Service, a front company operated by the CIA. Its crew overnighted in Shannon and flew out to Washington the next day, no doubt well rested. This was not a normal stop over, like hundreds that take place every day at Shannon, this was a getaway. A few months before this a young man called Binyam... [Read more]

Its Christmas Eve and I have just done two radio interviews for the BBC following the resignation of the Bishop of Kildare. Bishop Moriarty resigned four weeks after the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into child abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin. He was the second bishop to resign, Donal Murray quit last week and three further bishops, Eamonn Walsh, Raymond Field and Martin Drennan are under increasing pressure to resign their positions. The report was damning in its view of how the Catholic Church managed child abuse by its priests. It... [Read more]

In the past seven years we have now seen the resignations of four bishops in Ireland who have been implicated in the mismanagement of child sexual abuse by priests of the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Brendan Comiskey resigned in April 2002 after his resignation was sought by the Vatican under a code of canon law which requires a bishop who is deemed unfit for office to resign. Cardinal Desmond Connell resigned as Archbishop of Dublin in 2004 after many months of pressure and public outrage about his management of child abuse in the Dublin diocese. His resignation was scheduled,... [Read more]

You may have read the article I wrote for the Irish Times this week where I made the point that responsibility for covering up child abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin was not limited to Bishop Donal Murray but had to be shared by all those in positions of leadership in the Archdiocese. In particular I pointed out issues arising from the involvement of Bishop Eamon Walsh of a case in the Archdiocese of Dublin and questions about the level of cooperation he gave the Ferns Inquiry when serving as Apostolic Administrator in the Diocese of Ferns. Link here to that article. Bishop... [Read more]

So today Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Cardinal Sean Bready met with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the report of the Commission of Investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin. After their meeting the Vatican issued the following statement: Today the Holy Father held a meeting with senior Irish Bishops and high-ranking members of the Roman Curia. He listened to their concerns and discussed with them the traumatic events that were presented in the Irish Commission of Investigation’s into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin After careful study... [Read more]