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 engagement with victims, would have been an essential component of an appropriate response to abuse by priests. They are certainly at odds with the ongoing denial of the Vatican of its responsibility for the cover up of crimes against children and its use of sovereign immunity to block efforts to hold it to account before civil courts.

The perversity of blaming everyone else, including at times the victims themselves for the crimes and cover ups of the church in a ridiculous attempt to dodge accountability, whilst expressing care and concern for victims seems entirely lost upon the Vatican.

But there was a much more significant event this weekend.

Speaking at a Catholic University Cardinal Dario Hoyos revealed that a letter he wrote praising French Bishop Peirre Pican for not passing information about a rapist priest to the French police was sent to every Catholic Bishop in the world in 2001 with the approval of Pope John Paul II. Pican had been convicted of failing to report abuse by a Catholic Abbot sentenced to eighteen years in prison for paedophilia.

In his letter Cardinal Hoyos wrote, “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration. You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.” Hoyos was at the time one of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church as head of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy.

So there it is, indisputable proof that the Vatican actively supported the cover up of clerical sexual abuse.

Also exposed is the ongoing deceit of the Vatican’s protestations that the church has not covered up abuse. Only last week at the same press conference where he asserted that homosexuality was a cause of paedophilia, the Pope’s second in command Cardinal Bertone said that the church had never impeded investigations of abuse by priests.

Meetings are all very well, but surely honesty and a commitment to justice would be much more meaningful?

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 church those who rape and abuse will be reported to the civil authorities and children properly protected.

The letter is clearly an effort to restore the credibility of a church rocked by the publication of three state investigations into clerical crimes and church over ups in Ireland. The Pope has seen all three of these reports.

Published in May 2009, following an eleven year State investigation, the Ryan Report detailed the full extent of the horrific abuse endured by children abandoned to the ‘care’ of the church.

It reported ritualized, savage beatings, endemic rape and sexual assault and the exploitation of children forced to work to enrich the bloated religious congregations charged with their care.

Disgracefully, the Pope used his letter and this issue to attack one of his favourite targets, secularisation. We are asked to believe that the secularisation of Irish society led to abuse and cover up. In fact, it is the secularisation of society that finally led to the exposure of the crimes of the church.

The most horrific abuse was perpetrated, not in a secularised Ireland, but at a time when Irish society was dominated, socially and politically, by the Catholic Church.

That the Pope appears to have wilfully ignored this established fact is a blatant and disgraceful deceit.

Some have reported that the Pope issued a heartfelt apology to victims of abuse. In fact the word ‘sorry’ appeared just once in a letter running to almost four thousand seven hundred words.

The Pope said he was “truly sorry” that victims had suffered. Well, I too am sorry that human beings seem able to tolerate and perpetrate acts of brutality and depravity upon others. That sorrow and outrage is what informs my every day work towards universal respect for human rights.

But an expression of sorrow is not the same as an acceptance of responsibility. The letter does go some way to acknowledge the remorse of the church, but why is it impossible for this Vicar of Christ on earth to name truth in simple, unambiguous terms? Is that really too much to ask?

The Pope’s letter has been described as ‘unprecedented’ and an important step forward by the Vatican in dealing with clerical child sexual abuse.

It is neither. Just consider an earlier Papal decree addressing the issue of catholic clergy abusing children.

In his papal order Horrendum, Pope Pius V said that priests who abused children were to be stripped of the priesthood, deprived of all income and privileges and handed over to the civil authorities.

Pretty strong stuff, especially when one considers that it was issued in 1568.

Compare with that the actions identified by this modern day Pope at the end of his letter.

He has decreed that Irish Catholics should pray, fast and do penance for the next year in order to bring about the rebirth of the Irish Church.

And he has ordered a Vatican investigation of some Irish dioceses, presumably to ensure that they are following church law; the same law used by church leaders to explain their failure to report rapist priests to civil authorities.

So this letter is in fact a massive step backward when compared to the standard set by a seventeenth century Pope. Strip away some worthy and welcome sentiments, consider the important issues ignored and all that remains is a constant concern for the preservation of the institutional church.

Most damningly, there is little to suggest any real concern for the safety of children across the global church.

I just got got taught another lesson about the power of social networks and new media when I popped onto my Facebook page a few moments ago. All day we have been hearing apologists for Cardinal Sean Brady assert that he committed no crime when he swore to child victims of sexual assault to secrecy and failed to report those crimes to the Gardai or any other civil authority. People like Monsignor Maurice Dooley who has been popping up to defend the indefensible and proclaim that Sean Brady committed no crime and was quite right in his decision not to report child rape and abuse to the police. I kid you not, he actually spouted this during a debate with me on The last Word on Today FM earlier. If you can stomach it you can listen to that debate here.

Well it appears that he may well have, thats provided the Offences against the State Act 1939 is still in force. That act, and thanks to Francis for the heads up on this, states:

17.—(1) Every person who shall administer or cause to be administered or take part in, be present at, or consent to the administering or taking in any form or manner of any oath, declaration, or engagement purporting or intended to bind the person taking the same to do all or any of the following things, that is to say:—

( a ) to commit or to plan, contrive, promote, assist, or conceal the commission of any crime or any breach of the peace, or

( d ) to abstain from disclosing or giving information of the Commission or intended or proposed commission of any crime, breach of the peace, or from informing or giving evidence against the person who committed such an act,

I have ommitted sections 17 (1) b & c as they are not relevant to this case. Here is a link to the full text of the act.

If this legislation remains on the statute books, and it appears it does, the Cardinal Sean Brady and his co-inquisitors may well have committed a criminal offence. I see the Labour Party have rightly called for the Gardai to investigate his conduct in this case. If they do, as they clearly should, he might yet face charges.

Of course so then should any other cleric or member of the hierarchy who required any child or adult victim of clerical sexual abuse to swear any similar oath.

I had a call from Sinead O’Connor last night who wanted to communicate her own strong sense of outrage at the call from Bishop of Ferns, Dr Dennis Brennan for parishioners to donate money to meet the financial costs of that diocese’s negligence in dealing with clerical child sexual abuse.

Here is what Sinead wanted to say:

“Please allow me to express my astonishment upon reading the statement made on the evening of March 1st by the bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan.

His statement attempts to dictate to us in the same way the inquisition did, how christians should behave. Saying directly that it would be anti-christian of us to feel the church should pay its own bills for its own abuse with its own billions which it throttled from our grandparents, whom they also abused, physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually.

Evidence of sexual abuse by clergy, according to the murphy report, can be traced as far back as 320 a.d. and the first treatment centres for paedophile priests were created in 1940, named servants of the Paracletes. These centres were opened all over the world.

I would like to know  exactly whose idea this plan was, and from where were issued the instructions or permission to make such a statement.

The statement and its attempted manipulation of good catholic people could be described as unbelievable, stupid, comical. But in my opinion the only word that does it justice is evil.

How long do they expect us to restrain ourselves?

We have put up with this bull dung for hundreds of years.

A true christian is someone who, in any given situation is supposed to ask themselves what would Jesus do, and try to do that.

How an organisation which has acted  decade after decade only to protect its business interests above the interests of children, can feel it has the right to dictate to us what christian should do is beyond belief.

From the Pope on down through the vatican  and through therefore, the lower echelons (spelling?)  the whole organisation in my belief is in fact utterly anti-christian. and evil. As proven by centuries of torture, bloodshed, burnings, terrorism, and coverings up of “the worst crime” known to man.

And if Jesus christ is to be seen in the vulnerable of this world then all they have done is crucify the man over and over and over again.

If Christ was here, he would be burning down the vatican. and I for one would be helping him.

sinead o; connor.

A comment piece written for the Irish Daily Mail in response to reports that the Bishop of Ferns wants parishioners to contribute to the ongoing costs arising from the negligent handling of clerical sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic Church authorities.

In 1998 I first heard that the Diocese of Ferns had known that Fr Sean Fortune had sexually assaulted children as a seminarian. The story was that he had assaulted a group of boy scouts whilst studying for the priesthood in St Peters College in Wexford. The assault was reported to the church and scouting authorities. The Scouts banned him for life, the Diocese of Ferns ordained him a priest. That was 1979, and Sean Fortune remained in active ministry and continued to abuse until I made my complaint to the Gardai in 1995. Only then, when it was clear that they could no longer cover up the scandal of his crimes, did the Diocese of Ferns act and suspend Fortune from ministry.

The Vatican was also aware of concerns about Fortunes conduct. In the early 1980’s parishioners wrote to the Papal Nuncio to outline their concerns about the errant cleric. The Nuncio responded, writing that the Vatican was aware of their concerns. But the Vatican appears to have done nothing on foot of that complaint.

It was because I discovered evidence of such negligence by Church authorities that I decided to take legal action against the Diocese of Ferns and the Vatican. I did this to try and achieve two important outcomes. Firstly, I wanted to force the church to tell the truth about how they had failed to protect me, and many others, from a known child abuser. Secondly, I wanted to hold them to account for their negligence before the courts. I knew that the State either couldn’t or wouldn’t do so. The only means available to me was a civil suit, through which I hoped to force the Church to face the consequences of its gross failures.

And I succeeded. In 2003 the Diocese of Ferns publicly admitted negligence and agreed to pay me damages.

Yesterday the current Bishop, Dr Dennis Brennan, asked parishioners to help pay the costs of the failure of the diocese to prevent abuse. He wants parishioners to pay for the crimes of the church. The diocese reported that it has paid €10.5m in damages to victims, legal costs and to treat offenders.

It is worth noting that of this €10.5m, just over €8m has been paid by insurance settlements and from non church sources, including €650k from the taxpayer towards the €2m legal bill the diocese ran up in dealing with the Ferns Inquiry. By the way, victims giving evidence to the Ferns Inquiry ran up not a euro in legal costs.

To fund the remaining €2.5m, the diocese used cash reserves and took out a €1.8m mortgage on the Bishops Palace in Wexford. It now wants parishioners to pay half the of cost this mortgage.

Having used insurance settlements and taxpayer’s money to pay eighty percent of the costs, the Diocese of Ferns now wants parishioners to stump up about half of the remaining twenty percent.

It has some nerve. Surely it recognises that it alone should pay for the consequences of its negligence, even if that means the sale of all its assets, including the Bishops Palace?

Better yet, if the Vatican is serious about the survival of the Catholic Church in Ireland, let it dip into its reserves. The people of the Diocese have paid enough and suffered enough because of Church failures. When I sued the Church, it was the hierarchy I pursued, not the people who sit in the pews. At a time when most families are struggling to make ends meet, the Church should stump up for its own failures.

The following is an essay I contributed to a book ‘What being Catholic means to me’, published by Columba Press last year.

I’m not catholic anymore. I never formally quit the church or anything, I just came to realise that I was no longer part of it. I didn’t write to a bishop or the Pope, didn’t go through a defined process through which I renounced my allegiance to the “one true holy roman apostolic church”. I reckon that if my entry by proxy as an infant was valid, then my mature and considered decision to leave was certainly at least as valid and not at all subject to the demands for signed declarations from men who for me no longer held any moral authority.

I’ve been asked a lot over the years if I still consider myself to be catholic, and my answer was always the same. No, I no longer did.  And yet there is something so very real about writing it in the context of this essay that feels very emotional to me, a realisation perhaps of the enormity of that decision and the events which led to it. I have felt clear in my decision, in fact it has been clear to me for some time that I could not possibly belong to this church which has at an institutional level so betrayed me and the values it has professed, but nevertheless in considering this essay I have had cause to reflect back upon what the church has meant to me across my life and I am left feeling hurt and saddened in many ways.

There was a Sacred Heart picture in our kitchen when I was a boy. It had a flickering red light beneath the image of Christ who exposed his heart surrounded by thorns, a symbol of divine love for humanity. I didn’t know what it represented as a boy, but I could see that it was about love, about a demonstration of love on a powerful level that I couldn’t understand fully but felt captured by completely.  That image was a gentle but extraordinarily powerful presence in our home, as it was in most Catholic homes at the time. I loved it, though I didn’t really understand it.

Church was everywhere in my life then. At home as we knelt as a family to say the rosary, at school as I learnt my catechism and at mass on Sundays where I went with the rest of my family dressed in our Sunday best. Our church was a very ordered place back then. The women sat on the left hand side of the church, many with their heads covered by scarves, and the men on the right. Boys sat with their fathers and girls with their mothers. A few rows of men, maybe two or three deep, always stood at the back of the church. As the mass came to an end they would duck out and head for the pub next door, for that other Sunday ritual, the after mass pint. They were an incongruous crowd, standing together at the back of the church, shuffling and mumbling their way through the mass, waiting to be released. But they were there, week in and week out, just as their fathers before them. It was who they were. It was who we all were.

I loved the rituals of the church. I loved the certainty of them. The way Fr Redmond would intone the words of the mass, the weight of those words, words which spanned two millennia and which celebrated a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of a son for the love of humanity. The reverence of it all, the way we knelt with heads bowed as Fr Redmond head aloft the host and the Altar boy rang the bell to mark the moment of transubstantiation, when the bread became flesh and the wine became blood, when we were all in the presence of Christ. I was in awe of that sacrifice, of the love it was testament to, a love of humanity so great that God would give the life of his only Son. This was a loving God, a God of hope and truth.

I sometimes struggled with the messages I was given by those who instructed me on that faith. I found it difficult to reconcile that idea of a loving God with the heavy judgement of original sin or the notion that only by allegiance to this church could I find redemption. I loved the God that loved, that so believed in us that he was prepared to sacrifice his son for us. I didn’t understand this other God who was to be feared and who would cast me out if I proved not to be worthy of him. But that was how it was. I was taught that I was bad, that I was sinful and that my redemption from my sinful state was to be found by allegiance to those who spoke the words of God. If I did as I was told I could be saved from my base self, I could be made good again.

And that is what I believed. I believed that those who spoke the words of God were good and true and pure, even when they were not. I believed it because that is what I was required to believe. That was the truth of the world in which I lived and there was no room for other beliefs. That is what everyone believed, and who was I to disagree?

Imagine then how it was when a priest raped me. How was I to make sense of that? If he was undoubtedly good in the eyes of all then how was I to understand what had happened? There was only one way. I was bad. It was me, not the priest. After all I was the sinful one, the one in need of redemption, redemption that was in his gift. And so it was. I judged myself as I had been judged and took on the guilt of the sin that wasn’t mine. I carried it for years, turned it in on myself and it festered there, in a place where love did not exist, where God could surely not be found.

Years later I fought my way back to love. I confronted that past and forgave myself for crimes that I had not committed. I learnt to love myself and have compassion for the boy I was and the man I had become. I found out I wasn’t so bad after all.

The tragedy is that I did not discover this through a communion with my church. In fact I discovered it despite the actions of that church.

When I realised that I needed to speak about the things that had happened to me as a boy I had no idea of the complicity of the church. I did not know that the man who so harmed me had been ordained despite the knowledge that he had abused children. I did not know that my church had stood on the sidelines as he raped and abused and looked away, taking action only to protect itself and its money and leaving me and countless others at the mercy of monsters it had helped to create. I did not know, but those who led my church did, and they stayed silence in the presence of my pain. They did not speak, they did not own their crimes or try to comfort me. There was no love; no sacred heart that bled for those whose innocence and faith had been so offended.

When I turned to the Church that purported to be the church of the loving Christ I was not met with love and truth but with lies and obfuscation.

The denial and deceit of the hierarchy of the institutional Catholic Church was a final and terrible revelation of the corruption of its values by those who lead it. How could I trust the word of men who lied about their knowledge of such crimes and who facilitated the rape and abuse of children? For years Bishops, Cardinals and both the current and former Popes had suggested that the problem didn’t exist, or that it was wildly overstated by an anti-catholic media, or that it was an issue of homosexuals in the clergy, or most often, that they had no understanding of the reality of child sexual abuse and the recidivist nature of offenders.

But these were lies.

In early December 2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, made a staggering statement suggesting that media coverage of clerical sexual abuse was a conspiracy to bring down the Roman Catholic Church.

The current Pope was then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that powerful and influential role he was often referred to as Gods Rottweiler or the Vatican Enforcer. His position as head of the department once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, placed him in charge of managing and responding to cases of priests who abused children.

More than any other senior church figure apart from the Pope he had both the authority and knowledge to fully appreciate the scale of the problem. Speaking to journalists at a Catholic Congress in Rome he said, “I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.”

“In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type,” he said. “The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.

“Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church. It is a logical and well-founded conclusion.”

So in his view the truth was not that he and his colleagues who presided over the Church had covered up the rape and abuse of children, allowing paedophile priests to wreak havoc with virtual impunity. In fact, the real issue as he saw it was as “a planned campaign…intentional…manipulated”, based not upon outrage at the sins and crimes of the Catholic Church, but upon a “desire to discredit the church”.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s assertions were entirely discredited by a few years later by research in the US. In June 2002, US Bishops commissioned independent research into the scale of the problem. The research was carried out by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and found that clerical sexual abuse was “widespread” across the US Catholic Church, affecting some ninety-five percent of dioceses and involving between two and a half and seven percent of all diocesan priests. Overall, the research discovered that four percent of all priests in active ministry in the US between 1952 and 2002 had been accused of sexually abusing a child.[1]

The study also revealed that of the 10,667 people who made allegations of rape and abuse by priests, two thirds had been made prior to 2002. This means that in the US alone, the Catholic Church was aware of over 7,100 cases of children allegedly abused by its priests prior to the public emergence of the issue.

Early Church law also reveals that the Catholic Church has had an awareness of clerical sexual crime going back many centuries. The earliest reference to forbidden sexual behaviour in church literature dates from around the end of the first century. The Didache, which set out structures and rules for the newly emerging church, condemns many sexual practices and includes a specific ban against “corrupting youth”.

Many early church laws relate to sex with adult women and homosexuality, but there are frequent references to the crime of sexually abusing boys. Sexual sins ranked as high as murder and idolatry in early church law, the three gravest sexual sins being adultery, fornication and the sexual corruption of young boys. In fact some of the earliest church law refers explicitly to that crime. The Council of Elvira, which took place in 309AD, set out early church law in the area, detailing how clergy were to abstain from sexual offending under this new law.

Canon seventy-one of the Council of Elvira condemns men who sexually abuse young boys and sets out the penalty for the crime.

In 1051 St. Peter Damian, a monk who became a Bishop and later a Cardinal wrote extensively about the sexual crimes and immorality of the clergy of his day. His strongest criticism was of the irresponsibility of church superiors who refused to take action against offenders. He condemned homosexual activity by clergy, but clergy who abused young boys especially angered him. He attacked church superiors who ordained offenders and who failed to expel those who abuse from the priesthood. He also made a direct appeal to the reigning Pope, Leo IX, to take action.

No doubt then, what this eleventh century bishop would have had to say about his modern day brother bishops and cardinals who ordained abusers and appointed them to parish after parish allowing them to rape and abuse with near impunity.

On August 30th 1568, another Pope explicitly acknowledged the issue of clergy abusing children. In his papal order Horrendum Pope Pius V said that priests who offended were to be stripped of the priesthood, deprived of all income and privileges and handed over to the secular authorities.

There are scores of other references to the issue throughout Catholic Church history that expose as a lie the many statements made by the modern Catholic Church hierarchy claiming innocence and ignorance. They have known for centuries that priests could and did abuse children. They simply failed to do anything of any real significance to prevent it.

I loved my church once, when I believed in it. But I do not anymore. It gives me no pleasure to say so, no satisfaction or closure. I remember the Sacred Heart in the kitchen of my childhood, the faith of my grandmother, the power of the sacraments, the constant presence of the faith as an anchor in all of our lives. I remember how we looked to Church to make real the momentous moments of our lives; birth, marriage and death. I remember the faith of my forefathers and I feel nothing but sadness.

 

 

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[1] The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2004

Has it struck anyone else as obscene that in their rush to rationalise the abject failure of the Pope to properly address the deliberate cover up of the rape and abuse of children by Roman Catholic Priests, Irish Bishops seem to be suggesting that victims must be patient and wait for the Vatican’s grand design for our healing to be revealed?

In a letter from Bishop of Ferns Dr Denis Brennan which was read at masses in the Diocese, Dr Brennan asserted that the visit by Bishops was only one part of a process designed to bring healing to victims.

Well excuse me, but since when did those who were responsible for the cover up of abuse and its resultant trauma get to dictate or design the healing process for victims?

And just why exactly is the Pope unable to name the terrible wrong that the institution he heads is guilty of?

The Vatican, Catholic Bishops and Pope Benedict XVI have now made many statements about clerical sexual abuse. They have blamed the media, the decadence of western society, the sexual revolution, gays and now a “weakening of faith” and countless others for the scandal of clerical sexual abuse.

What they have consistently failed to do is name the simple truth of their own guilt in overseeing a cover up of crimes against children on a grand and global scale.

The Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI are fully aware of the extent of clerical abuse, not only in Ireland but worldwide, and have overseen the cover up of that abuse for decades. The failures exposed by the investigations we managed to force here in Ireland are the result of a deliberate and well orchestrated policy of cover up and denial spanning decades. And at the heart of the cover up, as Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church in all his ermine and finery sits the Pope.

So enough of the lies and half truths and breathtaking arrogance, enough of the blaming everyone and everything else.

If you can’t speak the truth, then perhaps it’s time to shut up.

But do not presume that anyone else can or will wait for you to sanction or ‘design’ their healing process.

The simple truth is that the problem is not a “weakening of faith” or the corruption of society. The problem is a corrupt institution led by an arrogant and deceitful hierarchy.

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 didn’t simply find that individual bishops had mismanaged cases; it found that there had been a deliberate cover up in an effort to protect the institution, its money and its interests.

The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities over much of the period covered by the Commission’s remit. The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up. The State authorities facilitated the cover up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes. The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages. Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests.

Noteworthy is the mention of “other Church authorities” and the finding that “the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up”. The Commission clearly believes that the cover up extends beyond the Archdiocese of Dublin and is the result of established Roman Catholic Church rules and structures. And who is responsible for Church rules and structures? The Vatican is of course and the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI.

So what has the response of the Vatican been to the Murphy Report? Well, the Pope has expressed his disgust and outrage at the content of the report. Mind you given the fact that he was responsible for the management of clerical child sexual abuse within the global church for the best part of two decades it can’t have been the detail of the abuse that “outraged” him, he must have been very familiar with that already. Perhaps it was the criticism of the institution that alarmed him? No doubt we will hear more in his upcoming pastoral letter to the Irish Church due sometime next year.

Whist we wait for that stunning moment though we do have other indicators of the Pope’s view of the scandal. Yesterday he gave his annual address to the Roman Curia (the global church government departments) yesterday. This event is akin to a ‘State of the Union’ address, an annual speech which addresses the important events in the life of the church over the preceding year.

Given the findings of both the Ryan and Murphy Reports, both published this year, one might have reasonably expected the Pope to address the issue of child abuse by priests and the now established fact that his church has grossly mismanaged such abuse. But he did not.

Not important enough clearly.

A Vatican spokesperson explained that no special significance can be attached to the Pope’s failure to mention the abuse scandals. The Irish Times covers the story – Link here.

Fr Lombardi said it would be wrong to attribute any significance to this, saying the pope would shortly be dealing with Ireland in the relatively unprecedented context of a “pastoral letter” to the “faithful in Ireland”.

“This speech is . . . not intended as a speech that will cover all the events of the year . . . As for Ireland, the pope will have plenty to say about the Irish church in his forthcoming pastoral letter to the Irish faithful. You will have plenty to reflect on in that document.”

Fr Lombardi also said the speech to the curia was addressed to the “universal church”.

“It’s obvious that the Irish church’s problems are very serious, there is a very dramatic situation there. However, this is really the specific problem of one country.”

So there we have it. It’s our problem you see. A local issue and not something worthy of mention in the context of the “universal” church.

So the scandals haven’t been an issue anywhere else at all really. Not in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, not in France despite the conviction of a Bishop there for failing to report abuse, not in Brazil where up to ten percept of Roman Catholic priests have been accused of sexual misconduct.

No, not in any of those places…just here.

Fair enough so.

So all we need is the wise counsel of Benedict XVI in the form of his pastoral letter and we will surely learn how to redeem ourselves and find our way back to goodness.

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, we were told as he had reached retirement age, but it was clear that he could not have continued in office following revelations of appalling mismanagement of child abuse.  Bishop John Magee quit as administrator of the Diocese of Cloyne this year after child protection practice in the diocese was described as “dangerous” by the church’s own child protection body.

And finally, after much public disquiet, and widespread public condemnation of his role in the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Dublin it is reported that the Vatican will announce the resignation of  Bishop Donal Murray at 11am tomorrow .

It must be said that not one of them went easily or with much grace. All resisted public pressure and public outrage and appeared to be unwilling or unable to understand the need for them to take responsibility for the dreadful and wilful mismanagement of child abuse in diocese for which they had responsibility. Of course, Bishop Donal Murray is not the only serving bishop who had responsibility for child protection in the Archdiocese of Dublin over the period investigated by Judge Yvonne Murphy and her team. His resignation will likely lead to increased pressure on the remaining four named in the Murphy Report; Bishops Walsh, Field, Moriarty and Drennan.

But we must ask ourselves just how much has been achieved by any of these resignations? Certainly many people may feel better knowing that these men are no longer in positions of enormous responsibility and power, but will their resignations result in any meaningful change to the culture of cover up and self-preservation which has placed so many children at the mercy of serial abusers right across the global Roman Catholic Church? I don’t believe so.

The fact remains that the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI continue to evade accountability for the cover ups at a global level and have failed to even respond to calls for them to put in place mandatory child protection across the global church. The Vatican ignored requests for information from the Murphy about their knowledge of and policy on child abuse by priests.

The church asserts that things have changed, that it is tackling child abuse and has put in place new mechanisms and policies to protect children. The fact remains thought that these policies have only been created in countries where scandal and public outrage which resulted from the advocacy of victims and media scrutiny forced a response upon a reluctant and dishonest church.

In countries where there have been no scandals and where victims remain marginalised and silent there have been no new polices and no action to protect children. Of course it is also clear that adherence to these shiny new policies are at best patchy. Evidence of this is to be found in the case of the Diocese of Cloyne and similar stories continue to emerge in other countries.

The cover up of child sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic Church is not the result of some befuddled bishops failure to understand the nature of abuse and its impact on children. Church history is littered with references to clerical paedophilia going back as far as the first century AD. Bishops took out insurance to protect their money from any future legal claims by victims of clerical abusers here in Ireland in the mid to late 1980s. Dioceses across the world also took out similar policies. This years before the scandals became public and the self same Bishops protested that they had no understanding of child abuse; they told us they didn’t even understand such crimes were prevalent. They lied and covered up crimes against children and turned a blind eye to the activities of the serial abusers they knowingly unleashed on unsuspecting communities.

The culture of the institutional Roman Catholic Church is rotten. It is corrupt. It’s that simple really. And until the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI accepts responsibility for its deliberate and wilful mismanagement of child abuse nothing will change and children will remain in terrible danger.

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 Walsh was none too happy with the facts I laid in my article and responded with barely concealed fury. His response didn’t really deal with the issues raised, instead he accused me of trying to “speak  out if the other side of my mouth”. He went on to call into question my role as Executive Director of Amnesty. The article can be read here.

In the course of his diatribe he did however let slip some rather interesting facts.

For example he said:

But as far back as 1990, I wasn’t a month in the job as a bishop, and I stood up at a meeting and I said that not alone should the police, who were already informed about an individual, but we should say where he was living and the number of his car, because I felt he was a danger.

This is especiall interesting given that Bishop Walsh is both a qualified Barrister (lawyer) and a Canon Lawyer. Often bishops have told us that they did not fully appreciate fully understand child abuse, that they didn’t so much consider it a crime as a moral lapse of some kind. This rather ridiculous excuse has been used in an attempt to suggest that the cover up of these crimes wasn’t deliberate but the result of a mistaken and confused approach to the rape of children by priests. 

But Bishop Walsh has now made it clear that he, a person eminently qualified in the law, appreciated as far back as 1990 that sexual abuse was a crime and that the church should report such crimes to the police.

So the question which Bishop Walsh must now answer is simple enough. Why didn’t be do so?

Bishop Walsh was a member of the first Advisory Panel of the Archdiocese of Dublin established in 1996 to manage child abuse cases. Did Bishop Walsh ensure every case reviewed by the panel was referred to the police?

It appears he did not.

Mary Rafftery addresses this and raises a number of further questions in today’s Irish Times.

BISHOP EAMONN Walsh on Wednesday last made a series of revealing statements to this newspaper on issues of clerical child sexual abuse in both Dublin and Ferns. It is worth analysing these in detail.

Defending himself against those who have called for his resignation, he stated the following: “As far back as 1990, I wasn’t a month in the job as a bishop, and I stood up at a meeting and I said that not alone should the police, who were already informed about an individual, but we should say where he was living and the number of his car, because I felt he was a danger.”

The strong implication here is that the archdiocese reported a specific priest to the Garda as early as 1990. This is a dramatic revelation, particularly as there is no reference to anything like it in the Murphy commission report.

Further, the behaviour of the Dublin bishops at this time was entirely aimed at covering up awareness and allegations of child abuse against their priests. The first time the Dublin archdiocese volunteered information on paedophile priests to the Garda was in fact a full five years later, when in 1995 archbishop Desmond Connell passed on the names of 17 priests (but omitted a further 11 against whom complaints had been made to the archdiocese).

A number of key questions now arise for Bishop Eamonn Walsh, particularly in the light of our knowledge of how the archdiocese applied the principle of mental reservation. Firstly, who precisely informed the Garda in 1990 about this priest, and what exactly was reported? If, as is likely, it was not the archdiocese, but rather a victim, or the parents of an abused child, what co-operation, if any, was offered by the bishops to the Garda?

Given the fact that Bishop Walsh was able to decide in 1990 that the priest was “a danger”, it can be assumed that the bishops had detailed knowledge of this priest’s criminal abuse of children. How much, if any, of this was passed on to the Garda, and when was it passed on?

Secondly, who else was present at the 1990 meeting to which Bishop Walsh refers? If it was one of the regular monthly meetings of all the Dublin bishops, what precisely was the nature of the discussion around reporting these matters to the Garda? What decisions were taken on foot of this? And, crucially, did Bishop Walsh actually follow up on his own suggestion and pass on what he knew about this abusing priest to the police?

Thirdly, Bishop Walsh refers to “a certain person” who “wrote in horror to the archbishop that somebody could even think that way” – a reference to Bishop Walsh’s own suggested reporting to the Garda.

Why does Bishop Walsh not now name this individual? In addition, if the bishop had concerns that information was being withheld from gardaí as early as 1990, what steps did he himself take personally to fulfil his own duty as a citizen to report all criminal activity of which he was aware to the civil authorities?

In relation to the Ferns diocese, the bishop claims an unblemished record. From 2002 to 2006, he was apostolic administrator in Ferns, and thus in charge of handing over the files to the non-statutory inquiry into child abuse established by the government and chaired by retired judge Frank Murphy.

As Bishop Walsh himself states, the Ferns report praises him for his co-operation. Also true is his claim that the report exonerated him in the matter of the last-minute handing over of internal diocesan files containing concerns and allegations against eight new priests. His tardiness was the “result of genuine errors of judgment”. Nonetheless, it meant that these allegations could not be fully investigated, and they appeared only as an appendix to the body of the report.

However, there is another, separate incidence of documentation withheld from the Ferns inquiry until the last moment. The Ferns report took a much sterner attitude to this case, a fact which Bishop Walsh does not mention in his recent remarks. The issue here was particularly serious as it concerned a priest (Fr Iota) still in ministry, a potential continuing danger to children.

The relevant file, which showed that the diocese had known Fr Iota was a child abuser as far back as 1970, was handed over to the inquiry by Bishop Walsh only after the victim (known as “Pamela” in the report) had come forward in the summer of 2005 and had contacted One In Four and Colm O’Gorman. This is despite the fact that the bishop himself had undertaken a complete review of all files upon his arrival in the diocese in 2002 with a focus on identifying any present and continuing risks to children.

The Ferns report states that it “was concerned that the details of this case were not communicated to the inquiry until its work had reached an advanced stage”. It added that the file’s contents “should have alerted the diocese to the existence of a potential child protection issue”.

In fact, Bishop Walsh had been in charge of the Ferns diocese for three years before any action was taken to protect children from this priest, who at the time was ministering abroad.

A full explanation for this three-year delay in dealing with a known child abuser remains to be provided by Bishop Eamonn Walsh.

It appears Bishop Walsh still has a number of questions to answer about his role in the managment of child abuse cases in both the Archdiocese of Dublin and the Diocese of Ferns.

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 of the Report, the Holy Father was deeply disturbed and distressed by its contents. He wishes once more to express his profound regret at the actions of some members of the clergy who have betrayed their solemn promises to God, as well as the trust placed in them by the victims and their families, and by society at large.

The Holy Father shares the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland, and he is united with them in prayer at this difficult time in the life of the Church.

His Holiness asks Catholics in Ireland and throughout the world to join him in praying for the victims, their families and all those affected by these heinous crimes.

He assures all concerned that the Church will continue to follow this grave matter with the closest attention in order to understand better how these shameful events came to pass and how best to develop effective and secure strategies to prevent any recurrence.

The Holy See takes very seriously the central issues raised by the Report, including questions concerning the governance of local Church leaders with ultimate responsibility for the pastoral care of children.

The Holy Father intends to address a Pastoral Letter to the faithful of Ireland in which he will clearly indicate the initiatives that are to be taken in response to the situation.

Finally, His Holiness encourages all those who have dedicated their lives in generous service to children to persevere in their good works in imitation of Christ the Good Shepherd.

His statement has not exactly been lauded. For obvious reasons.

The suggestion that the Pope was “deeply disturbed and distressed”  by the content of the report is pretty ambigious to say the least. Benedict XVI was for more than twenty years the head of the Congregation for the Doctorine of the Faith (CDF), when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In this capacity he headed the Vatican department which was responsible for the management of abuse cases right across the global Roman Catholic Church.

In 2001 he wrote to every Bishop in the world in May 2001 instructing them on how they were to handle cases of child sexual abuse by priests. The letter stated that the CDF would “continue to have exclusive competence” for how cases were to be handled. Note the word “continue” here, as in it alreaday was the entity with exclusive competence to decide how cases were to be handled.

The letter said the CDF was to be informed about all cases of priests who sexually abused children and asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and kep the evidence confidential for up to ten years after the victim reached adultood. Link to news coverage here.

So Pope Benedict XVI has detailed personal expereince of managing the issue of clerical sexual abuse for many years, at the global level. He is fully aware of the scale of the problem and is the source of the document about which the Commission of Investigation wrote to both the Papal Nuncio and the Vatican in an effort to discover the nature of the church cover up of abuse in Dublin. The Vatican and the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador to Ireland, both failed to even reply to the letters from the Commission. Link here to that story.

Any expression of surprise or outrage by the Pope on reading the report of the commission is disingenuous in the extreme. He can not be surprised by either the scale and nature of the abuse, or more importantly, the deliberate cover up of the absue by the Archdiocese and its Archbishops and Bishops over many decades.

What is especially outrageous is the suggestion that the Pope shares the “outrage, betrayal and shame felt by many of the faithful in Ireland”. Isn’t it obscene that the leader of this global church who has personally previously dicated a policy of secrecy in the handling of abuse by priests. So how has he been betrayed exactly? Is he himself guilty of a staggering betrayal of children and members of the church he now leads?

It is frankly sickening that the Pope is portaying himself as a victim in this context.

It is interesting though to read how the Vatican, and the Pope, have clearly decided to place the bleame for the cover up identified by the Commission fully on the Irish church authorities. Given that every bishop is directly and solely accountable to the Pope, and that in 2001 the Pope, in his previous role with the CDF, directed the approach national churches and individual bishops were to adopt in managing complaints of abuse by priests it seems clear that he, and the Vatican share responsibilit with national or local church authorities.

The undertaking to continue to work to “understand better how these shameful events came to pass and how best to develop effective and secure strategies to prevent any recurrence” is also galling.

The Roman Catholic Church has been aware of paedophilia in its ranks almost since its foundation. As I detailed in my book Beyond Belief, Church history is littered with references to previous scandals and church law going back as fard as the first century AD. Just how long does the Church need to understand its own actions?

Much more detailed information on this history is documented in the excellent Sex, Priests and Secret Codes by Tom Doyle, Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall.

Finally, the suggestion that those of us affected by this cover up and these apalling crimes might gain somekind of comfort from the announcement that the Pope will now write a pastoral letter to the Irish demonstrates an appalling arrogance on the part of the Vatican.

We don’t need a letter, announced in breathless excitement by Archbishop Martin.

We don’t need any more papal expressions of regret at the actions of some priests and clergy.

The only thing we need is the truth.

Admit the nature and scale of the cover up. Get real, tell the truth and take responsibility.

Try and be at least a little Christ-like in your response to the deliberate and wilfull disregard of the welfare of children by the church you head, and then, and only then, you might begin to deal with this issue in a meaningful way.

The scale and deliberate nature of the cover-up revealed by the Murphy report has left many people outraged and, quite understandably, there have been vociferous calls for accountability. In the white heat of the past week much of the outrage has been directed at Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray, who now seems set to resign, but the responsibility for such a wide and systemic cover-up cannot be limited to one man.

All those who held positions of responsibility in the Archdiocese of Dublin are implicated in this institutional cover-up.

The role of Bishop Eamonn Walsh is significant. He served as secretary to Archbishop McNamara before his appointment as auxiliary bishop in 1990. He was a member of the first Dublin Archdiocese Advisory Panel established by Desmond Connell in 1996 to monitor child protection.

One of the cases considered by the panel in 1997 was that of Fr Noel Reynolds. Cardinal Connell put in place an investigation into complaints about the priest in late 1995, though it appears complaints against Reynolds dated back as far as the 1970s. The panel considered the case in March 1997 and decided that there was no clear evidence of child sexual abuse but that some inappropriate behaviour did happen.

In 1998 a social worker told Bishop Walsh that a client had alleged she had been abused by Reynolds. Bishop Walsh told her to write to the chancellor, Msgr Dolan. He did not tell her to report the case to the Garda, nor did he do so himself. In fact the archdiocese decided that no formal complaint had been made and they therefore didn’t report the case to the Garda or to the health board.

In June 1999, the social worker contacted the archdiocese to inform them that two sisters had contacted the gardaí to make a complaint about Fr Reynolds. Later the same month, the archdiocese finally contacted the Garda and informed them that it had received complaints of sexual abuse by Reynolds in the late 1970s. Reynolds later admitted he sexually assaulted more than 20 children. He told gardaí he had inserted a crucifix into the vagina and anus of one of his victims, even offering the crucifix to gardaí as evidence.

The archdiocese appears to have informed the Garda of the complaints only after it became clear that the victims had themselves reported Reynolds to the Garda.

It is not the only occasion when Bishop Walsh was involved in the delayed passing on of information to the civil authorities. In his role as administrator of the diocese of Ferns, Bishop Walsh was responsible for ensuring that all information about child abuse concerns held on church files was passed to the Ferns inquiry

In the summer of 2005, I was approached by a woman who had been abused in the early 1970s by a priest from the diocese of Ferns. She was certain the diocese had been aware of the complaint for more than 20 years, and in an effort to know what the diocese might have held on file about her, she contacted them in May 2005. She became dissatisfied with the response of the diocese and in July she contacted me at the offices of One in Four.

At the request of Pamela, the pseudonym the woman was given in the Ferns report, I wrote to Bishop Walsh on July 14th, 2005, asking that any further contact with her should be routed through One in Four, thus putting the diocese on notice that One in Four was aware of the case. One in Four also arranged for Pamela to attend the inquiry.

Two weeks later, some two months after Pamela first contacted the diocese of Ferns, the diocese sent documents to the Ferns inquiry that made it clear the complaint against the priest had been known to the diocese since the early 1970s. These files had not been disclosed to the inquiry.

The diocese explained that this was due to “a regrettable error” on its part. Following a full review of files held by the diocese, information relating to a further eight priests was found not to have been disclosed as a result of this same “regrettable error”. Five of the eight cases were found to be relevant to the inquiry, but could not be properly investigated as the inquiry had concluded its investigation. Bishop Walsh was fully aware of at least two of these cases, having reviewed both upon his appointment to Ferns in 2002. This review involved meeting both of the priests involved and referring one for assessment. Yet he failed to notify the inquiry of either case for more than three years.

Fr Iota, who abused Pamela, had spent more than 20 years working in São Paolo, Brazil. He remained in ministry there until after Pamela made her complaint, despite the evidence contained in the diocesan files. It is hard to understand how this was possible if Bishop Walsh had properly reviewed all files upon his appointment in 2002.

In late 2006 I went to São Paolo while making the BBC television Panorama film, Sex Crimes and the Vatican. I visited the impoverished community where Fr Iota had lived for two decades. I went to see his house, beneath which was a creche. I interviewed the bishop of the diocese there about the case.

The Ferns report said Bishop Walsh had undertaken to find out if there were any concerns about Fr Iota during his time in São Paolo. I asked the bishop if he had been asked to carry out any such investigation by Bishop Walsh. He replied he had not, and that he had no reason to believe any such investigation was even necessary as Fr Iota had denied the allegations, and that he believed the priest. He said he had limited contact with the diocese of Ferns about the case.

It is certain that the negligence and deceit uncovered in Dublin extend to church leaders across all dioceses. No one resignation will account for their collective failure or make things right.

The horrifying contents of the Dublin Archdiocese report and the sheer scale of the cover up have shocked Irish society even after the Ryan report last May and the Ferns report in 2005.

Bishops in Dublin colluded with child abusers, protecting them and hiding them, enabling them to prey on the innocent. Children were deliberately sacrificed to protect the Church and its money. In all, fourteen bishops were found to have failed in some way in the handling of cases of child abuse by priests.

Worst of all, it was the most vulnerable children who often the victims. Dublin’s poorest communities, places where people were less likely to challenge the men who called themselves spiritual leaders, were used as sanctuaries for abusers.

Priestly abusers raped and assaulted countless children, destroying lives, devastating families and the communities they were meant to support and guide. And yes, once again, Bishops knew, and did nothing.

Those who carried out these unspeakable atrocities can’t be allowed to get away with it. The Irish people, especially their victims, need to see them in a courtroom. They must face justice. Sadly it would appear that there is little possibility of those who covered up such crimes, who lied to and misled the public, who failed to report child abuse and rape to the police here in Ireland and who callously put self-interest and their own wealth ahead of the protection of children facing any criminal sanction in this state. It is another glaring example of failure on the part of our legis;ature that this is the case.

In 2005, when working with One in Four Ireland, I successfully campaigned for new laws that would criminalise such willful disregard for the protection of children  by people in high positions of responsibility. But the law we won will not result in prosecutions of any bishop who covered up child abuse in the past. No law can be applied retrospectively.

The response of the Catholic Church to the report has been a complete failure of leadership. The only thing the bishops seem to know about responsibility and accountability is how to avoid them.

But this goes beyond Ireland. The Vatican and the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador to Ireland, ignored requests for information from the inquiry. They have been largely silent since the report was published last week but our own Government seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to challenge them.

If this State is no longer the servant of the Church, and if the days of deference to the Church by politicians and civil servants are truly over, then the Pope’s ambassador must be summoned by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to explain himself. If he was the Ambassador of any other State which had questions to answer about the rape and abuse of Irish children this would already have happened.

But we cannot pretend that this was all the fault of the Church. We must not point the finger at the clergy and say they, and they alone, are to blame. While we punish the guilty we cannot continue to avoid our own responsibility.

From Breakingnews.ie:

In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of “don’t ask, don’t tell” throughout the Church.

“The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,” it said.

“The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.

“The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.”

We don’t protect our children in Ireland.

More than three years ago the Ferns report revealed that the HSE has no powers to prevent abusers outside the family from having contact with children. Nothing has changed despite all the handwringing that followed Ferns.

When she was Minister for Education Mary Hanafin announced that the State, our Government, has no legal responsibility for what happens to our children in our schools.

This must change. In this State, if a company director breaks the law, he can be barred from being a director, but it seems that a Bishop who has been found to have covered up the rape of children can remain the patron of state funded schools and be left responsible for the safety of tens of thousands of children.

This is not about driving the Church out of our schools; this is about the State living up to its responsibilities and taking seriously its duty to protect our children.

Where the State fails to defend the rights of children then abuse and exploitation are often the result. Our children are our responsibility, and not the responsibility of any agency that places itself above the law. We can see now the consequences not only of cover up on the part of the Catholic Church, but also of the State’s failure to guarantee children’s rights and child protection.

 So what are we going to do about it?

 It is over ten years since Fianna Fáil came to power promising a referendum to put children’s rights at the heart of our Constitution. They said it was “a key priority”.

 It was promised again in 2002 and again in 2007, and again when the revised programme for government was agreed with the Greens.

 But the rights of children are not on the agenda in Government Buildings and won’t be until we force our politicians to put it there.

Unless our most fundamental law demands that we put children’s rights at the heart of the decisions we make they will remain targets for abuse and neglect. Our Government will simply wash its hands of them.

And it will be our fault, because we let them do it.

An op ed I wrote for the Irish Daily Star which was published today. The report was published this afternoon. More to follow on the report later.

It can be downloaded here.

Even after the Ryan report last May and the Ferns Report in 2005, the contents of the Dublin Diocese report, the scale of the cover-up, will shock Irish society.

 Bishops in Dublin colluded with child abusers, protecting them and hiding them, enabling them to prey on the innocent. Children were deliberately sacrificed to protect the Church. Dozens of priests and members of the clergy were involved.

 Worst of all, it was the most vulnerable children who were the victims. Dublin’s poorest communities, places where people were less likely to challenge the men who called themselves spiritual leaders, were used as sanctuaries for abusers.

 Priestly abusers raped and assaulted countless children, destroying lives, devastating families and the communities they were meant to support and guide. And yes, once again, Bishops knew, and did nothing.

 Those who carried out these unspeakable atrocities can’t be allowed to get away with it. The Irish people, especially their victims, need to see them in a courtroom. They must face justice.

The Catholic Church in Ireland will never be the same after this report is published. But we cannot pretend that this was all the fault of the Church. We must not point the finger at the Church and say they, and they alone, are to blame.

 While we punish the guilty we cannot continue to avoid our own responsibility.

We don’t protect our children in Ireland. We never have.

Over three years ago The Ferns Report revealed a shocking gap in Irish child protection law. It told us that the HSE have no powers to prevent abusers outside the family from having contact with children. The Dublin Report is likely to tell us that this is still true today; nothing has been done despite all the handwrining which followed Ferns.

When she was Minister for Education in 2006 Mary Hanafin announced that the state, our government, has no legal responsibility for what happens to our children in our schools.

It is over ten years since Fianna Fáil came to power promising a referendum that would put children’s rights at the heart of our Constitution. They said it was “a key priority”.

It was promised again in 2002 and in 2007, and again just a week ago when the revised programme for government was agreed with the Greens.

The rights of children are not on the agenda in Government Buildings and won’t be until we force our politicians to put it there.

Unless our most fundamental law demands that we put children’s rights at the heart of the decisions we make they will remain targets for abuse and neglect.

Our Government will simply wash its hands of them.

Until the next report.

Because make no mistake, unless we act, we’ll be back here again.

A feature written for the Irish Sunday Mail about the RTE ‘Would You Believe’ film, My Fathers House which was broadcast on Sunday November 1st 2009.

The house really hasn’t changed much, at least not from the outside. It sat at the end of a long driveway; about two hundred metres back from the road, perched above the church which rests in the hollow below. It’s quite an ugly house, pebble-dashed and still painted the same sickly peachy cream colour as it had been years earlier. Two stories high at the front, there’s another floor hidden from view, a basement.  One of the first things Fr Sean Fortune did upon his appointment to Poulfur in 1981 was to establish youth groups in that basement and a “reconciliation room” for boys who were in trouble at home.

I could see the roof of the church, in a deep hollow to the left of the driveway. The church is built on an old penal mass site, a place of worship going back hundreds of years. The church itself is rather beautiful, nestling at the bottom of the old mass hollow, below the road and surrounded by trees. Driving down the winding roads that lead to Poulfur is a strange experience for me still. It’s almost thirty years since Fr Sean Fortune first brought me there. But driving that road still always takes me back in time. I still get a sense of what it felt like years earlier as he drove me down the same road, away from my home and family and towards this house, his house, and the place where he hurt me so terribly.

I had been back to Poulfur a few times over the years since then. I came back in 1995 when I made my first statement to the Police, detailing how I had been abused for more than two years by Fortune in this same house from 1982 to 1983. I had come back again in 2001, this time with a BBC TV camera crew to make the film Suing the Pope. That was the first time I had come back to the house itself, but I didn’t go inside. Instead we had filmed in the church grounds, with the shadow of the house looming above. Late one night when we had finished filming I went up to the house and peered through the kitchen window. It was dark and the house was empty so I couldn’t see in. I climbed up on the window sill and hung there, peering in to the darkness, desperately trying to see if it was still the same, half-expecting to see the fourteen or fifteen year old me in there slumped over the kitchen table, alone and miserable, trapped there, unable to prevent or even name what was happening to him. That day I had been desperate to get into the house, desperate to find that me, the boy still trapped in that hidden horror. But now, eight years on, things are very different.

For a start I am not trapped any more. I have come back not to free myself from a secret and hidden history, the truth is long out, and I am free of it all. But not everyone is.

The house is no longer the home of the parish priest in Poulfur. After Sean Fortune left and the savage history of his time there was revealed, his successor didn’t want to live there. So the Diocese built a new house for the new priest and Fortune’s house has instead become a space used by community groups for occasional meetings. No-one lives there now. No-one wants to.

A woman from the area said to me recently that she has often wanted to drive down there late one night and burn it down. That she hated it remaining as a kind of dark mausoleum that reminds everyone of the terrible things that happened there.

When RTE’s Would You Believe asked me to work with them on a film following the publication of my book Beyond Belief earlier this year I knew that this was a great opportunity to talk about this history in a new way. I wanted to explain how facing the truth of my own past, and facing it with those whom I loved, had allowed me to finally break free of it. I wanted to try to show how the same might be possible for anyone who remains caught in a past they fear is too painful to face, whatever the cause. How the truth, and a commitment to try and respect each other as we struggle to move beyond secrets and lies and unspeakable hurt, really can set us free.

And so I had to go back, not only to Poulfur but to Adamstown, the County Wexford village I lived in as a child. I had to go back to my father’s house, to the land he had farmed, as had his father before him. I went back there so that I could talk about how facing the truth of the abuse I suffered had allowed me to find my father. Dad and I had been distant for years, each of skirting around the things we couldn’t say to each other and trapped in silence. Facing the past, reporting the abuse to the Police, had forced us to face each other and changed both of our lives. Dad was central in my coming forward back in 1995, his love and his courage made it possible for me to face my own fear. He was and is a huge source of inspiration for me in everything I do.

What we were able to achieve together in facing the truth taught me that allowing hurt to fester only causes greater hurt. It taught me that in facing that which we fear most we often discover the best of who we are. That’s what happened for my Dad and me. That’s our truth.

Fear corrupts. It freezes us. It leaves us unable to react. I used to be afraid all the time, afraid of facing the past for fear of what I might find out about myself. But not anymore.

So often, we run from things we have done that we feel mark us as bad. I know that feeling; for so many years I ran from my own feelings of shame and self-blame.

 

I ran from my life on the streets, the nights where I allowed myself to be exploited in exchange for a bed. I ran from the abuse, my memories of it, my physical reactions to it and my powerlessness to prevent it. I believed that these shameful, awful experiences named the truth of who I was. But they don’t.

 

The truth of who I am is to be found in the way I responded to the events that I have experienced. How I chose to deal with them, once I was free to do so.

 

The things we do as we struggle to survive unspeakable trauma name the power of our instinctive desire to survive, but they say very little about who we are – what we believe and feel, and the principles and values we hold dear. It is only when we have the space to make free and informed choices that we discover who we actually are.

 

And we can only make those kinds of choices when we face our fear and name the truth. We cannot make them if we allow a house to become a tomb to our fear, a place where we hide our demons and refuse to face them. And that’s what Fortune’s house had become to so many people. That’s why it was time to go back and open up those doors, to refuse to allow that place to remain a house of horror and show instead that it was just a house; that no bogey man lives there now and that it cannot hurt us anymore.

I was met at the door by Fr Oliver Sweeney, the parish priest who came to Poulfur back in 2002, just weeks before Suing the Pope was broadcast and who has been there ever since. He is a good and decent man; with a powerful commitment to the people he serves. He had at first feared allowing me to return with cameras in tow, but in the end he saw that letting the world in might allow this place to break free of the past too.  That took courage, and faith, both of which he has in abundance.

He left me alone to walk around the house. I soon forgot the camera was there as I went from room to room. What had been the dining room back then, where Fortune had insisted I sit and have breakfast with him every morning I was there, is now an office. The dark wood dining table and shelves lined with silver teapots are gone to be replaced by filing cabinets and a desk. The room next door is now a meeting room, where regular AA meetings take place; a room where people face their own demons and find strength from a community of others who walk the same road. I liked that a lot. It seemed to me to defy the idea that this house could only ever be a dark place; instead it could become a place of hope and courage.

I went upstairs then. What had been Sean Fortune’s bedroom is on the left at the top of the stairs; it has a big old wooden door painted a gloss white with an old-fashioned ceramic doorknob. There were two other doors at the top of the stairs off the same small landing, leading to other bedrooms, rooms I was never allowed to sleep in when I was brought there. Opposite his bedroom door there had been a prayer space. A kind of small room which had contained a statue of the Virgin Mary which sat upon an altar surrounded by candles in front of which was a prayer kneeler over which there had always been draped a set of glass rosary beads. But that was all gone now. The space was empty, nothing more than a dusty old cupboard.

As I turned to go into Fortune’s old room I remembered how it has looked years earlier. There had been a huge old wardrobe along the right hand wall as one came into the room. Just beyond it used to be a sink in the corner and on the opposite wall was a dressing table with a mirror over it, to the left was the bed, again big and made of old polished wood.

As I walked in, I half-expected it to be the same still. But it wasn’t of course. All the furniture was gone, only the sink in the corner was left. There was nothing there. It was just a room.

As I stood and looked out the window I remembered all that had passed. There were no more secrets. No need to hide from the past anymore. Now it was time to talk about how we might move forward together.

I walked out of the room and headed downstairs to have a cup of tea with Fr Ollie and some members of the parish council and talk about the future. After all, if we allow ourselves to triumph over the past, what else is there?

 

Colm O’Gorman is the author of the memoir Beyond Belief.  

This week I had the unique experience of being “uninvited” from taking part in a Mass of Healing and Reconciliation planned by Fr Iggy O’Donovan at the Augustinian Church in Drogheda. It seems the Archdiocese of Armagh, led by Cardinal Sean Brady, believes there was something “inappropriate” about the invitation and instructed Fr O’Donovan to withdraw it.

It’s a real shame. A shame that senior Church leaders have chosen to close their hearts, their minds and their ears to words offered in a true spirit of hope. Hope informed by an absolute belief in the endless possibilities to be found in our human capacity to transcend terrible trauma and find a way forward together.

But there it is. They have refused. They have used their power to prevent such a process from finding even more powerful expression by locating it in Church.

As things have worked out though it would appear that the Archdiocese has shot itself in the foot once again. What would have been a quiet, if significant moment, for a few hundred people max in Drogheda has turned into somehting much bigger. Four days of media reports of their instruction to “uninvite” me has simply left them looking foolish and meant that many more people are interested in what I might have said. I have had a few requests from media to give them the text of what I planned to say.

So what are the words I would have spoken that they deem, without any inquiry, to be inappropriate?

As it happens, I didn’t have a text prepared. I prefer to speak without a pre-prepared text as it allows me to engage more with the group I am speaking to in the moment, rather than deliver something I decided would suit before even meeting them.

I of course had a clear sense of what I wanted to say, but wanted to do that in a spontaneous, rather than in a prepared way.

So I sat down and wrote it out. The Irish Times ran bits of it, and earlier today I recorded it for the This Week show for RTE Radio 1. It will go out tomorrow between 1 and 2pm, ironically enough at the same time as the service in the Augustinian Church in Drogheda.

Anyway, here it is, the words Cardinal Brady and Bishop Clifford feared and believed would be somehow “inappropriate”:

I am not here today to rake over old, established hurts. Instead I want to speak about my sense of an immense opportunity for us all, that having named and to a large part owned the truth of the terrible crimes inflicted upon children within church, we might now find a way forward together in a new spirit of truth, compassion, understanding and love. That this might happen within Church here today has I think particular power. If we can come together in the very place where such hurt has in the past been hidden and denied then we really can model something new, something renewed within ourselves; the courage to listen to difficult truths, to learn and to move forward together. We will have conquered fear and refused to be held back by those who remain trapped in their own fear and denial.

We know the harm done. We know the price of our failures to address terrible wrongs and we know we must change the way we work as a society to confront such abuses in the future, to become the kind of society we aspire to be. Perhaps we still fear change? But what would it be like if we were to change? What would that demand of us, and what would it mean for us?

We are so frightened of seeing the darkness in our collective humanity that we fail to embrace the light that exists in at least equal measure there; the profound beauty in our own humanity that can respond with truth and courage to the things we see and do that are simply wrong.

We are so frightened of acknowledging the awful things done to others by people close to us, people we love and even by ourselves that we end up though our denial allowing such things to happen. In our silence we collude, in our denial we facilitate.

What we have yet to understand is that we can only be enriched if we have the courage and compassion, the humanity and integrity to name injustice wherever we see it, especially when we are party to causing injustice ourselves.

I believe in the power of truth. Naming the truth in difficult circumstances is always the right thing to do. If we have the courage to hear and accept the truth of who we are and what we have done, to face it and own it, and to find a way forward from that place, then we can change the world. 

Truth used like that challenges us to face the worst of who we can be, but also to discover the best of who we are. So often, we run from things we have done that we feel mark us as bad. I know that feeling; for so many years I ran from my own feelings of shame and self-blame.

I ran from the abuse, my memories of it, my physical reactions to it and my powerlessness to prevent it. I believed that these shameful, awful experiences named the truth of who I was. But they don’t.

The truth of who I am is to be found in the way I responded to the events that I have experienced. How I chose to deal with them, once I was free to do so.

And the same is true for us all. We can run from the past, deny our responsibility for it, we can blame, judge and hate others, if we choose to. Or we can turn and face it, learn from it and move forward together. We now know what happened within our church and our society. What matters now is how we respond to it, that we find the capacity to learn and change, the compassion to understand the hurts we each experienced and the love to move forward together.

Facing this dark part of our history has been painful in so many ways. But in facing it together we now have the opportunity to discover who we are as a society. We have the chance to show that we have the courage, the integrity and the humanity to work through and past our shared hurt, our failures, our anger and our disappointment, and to become the best of who we can be. In facing our collective darkness we will discover our collective humanity. Surely we owe each other that?

From the first letter of St. John:

Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

 

Triumphing over a tormented childhood

Brodcast on May 20 2009, on this episode on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek Libby Purves is joined by Colm O’Gorman, Penelope Wilton, Donald Reeves and Bradley and Soren Stauffer Kruse.

Click here to listen.

Colm O’Gorman is Ireland’s executive director of Amnesty International and founder of the charity One in Four, which helps victims of abuse. When he was 14 he suffered sexual abuse over several years by a local parish priest, who went on to be accused of 66 charges of sexual offences against teenage boys. In 1998 he sued the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. Beyond Belief is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Penelope Wilton is one of Britain’s leading actresses. She is about play Gertrude in Michael Grandage’s production of Hamlet. Her work is extensive and includes – for theatre – The Family Reunion, The Chalk Garden (for which she won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress) and The House of Bernarda Alba, for television Half Broken Things, Dr Who and Ever Decreasing Circles, and for film The History Boys, Pride and Prejudice and Calendar Girls. Hamlet is part of the Donmar in the West End season at Wyndham’s Theatre.

Donald Reeves is probably best known for being Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, where he created a radical church with a coffee house and street market. In his book, Memoirs of a Very Dangerous Man, he tells of life in the church as well as his several brushes with Lady Thatcher and his devotion to working for peace in the Balkans. Memoirs of a Very Dangerous Man is published by Continuum.

The Sugar Dandies are made up of Soren and Bradley Stauffer Kruse. They are the same sex ballroom dance champions and the first male couple to be regular ballroom dance competitors.

 

I’ll do my first ever live in studio interview for Beyond Belief  this morning with the fabulous Jumoke Fashola on BBC London. Really looking forward to it. I’m in London for the next five says and have lots of media lined up. After months of waiting its all go. I am relieved that the waiting is finally over and I can get on with it at last.

Link here to Jumoke’s site whre you can hear the interview.

If you want to leave a comment for Colm please post it here. Please note that  your post will be public, though your email address will not be posted.

In 1948, in a global effort to ensure that the inhumanity of the Second World War would never happen again, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)was passed and adopted by the United Nations without a single dissenting voice. 

Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Irish Section, in association with RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime programme, broadcast a series of radio columns, one dedicated to each article of the Declaration, to bring this historical and foundational document to life, demonstrating how central and relevant it is to our everyday lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that human rights begin in ‘small places’. In the first of a series of Drivetime radio columns celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Colm O’Gorman introduces the UDHR and explains how our human rights begin in the home, the school, the hospital and our local community.

Colm O'Gorman