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.

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.

I was moved to my core by the depth of isnight in the letter copied below from today’s Irish Times.

It is searing in its insight, but also in the hope central to the demand Christopher sets us all as individuals who make up our families, communities, institutions and societies.

the problem is best described as the abuse of power, in all its forms, from the personal to the institutional, for control or profit. Resolving this will protect children, and much more, in the future. It is linked in essence to all struggles for liberty, and must be at the heart of and visibly resolved in any decent, healthy society that dares to call itself decent.

Donnacha O’Connell, former Dean of Law at NUIG speaking at an Amnesty International event a few months back described the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted in direct response to the horrors of Wordl War II as “wisdom distilled through trauma”.

His description of the UDHR rushed to my mind upon reading Corneilius Crowley’s words.

Madam, – I spent my childhood in Irish Catholic boarding schools, ranging from the very top schools to reformatories, from age five-and-a-half to 17, and as a ward of court, I was  during holidays, in custody of my relatives. Who were less than empathetic.

Thus, as a child there was no one for me to turn to talk to about my experiences. I grew up believing those experiences, and my shame, were normal.

I believed my low self-esteem was my own fault, that I was evil, a sinner and at heart a disgusting, filthy and ugly person, even though I could pass myself off as reasonably affable.

My life has been pretty much ruled by those experiences and how I “‘adapted” to them, how I internalised the values of those who abused me, and took on the image they projected on to me as my own identity.

Years and years of unhappiness, dysfunction, insecurity and a nameless rage (for which, for a long time I had  no target – and that meant I turned the rage upon myself and those close to me) have dogged my life.

I have struggled as best I can to heal this for myself, and to understand, to fully comprehend  the dynamics of abuse operating at such a huge scale, such that it might be classed a societal problem, if not the societal problem, simply because the problem is tractable, because the cycles can be broken, and because this should never happen to any child. I, and many others are living proof of this.

And the problem is best described as the abuse of power, in all its forms, from the personal to the institutional, for control or profit. Resolving this will protect children, and much more, in the future. It is linked in essence to all struggles for liberty, and must be at the heart of and visibly resolved in any decent, healthy society that dares to call itself decent.

And that is the only path which I as a survivor deem plausible if we as a society and as parents are to honour all children, for all time.

It is time, well past time actually, to clean up our collective and centralised acts. – Yours, etc,

CORNEILIUS CROWLEY

London, England.