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.

The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was “busy cleaning its own house” and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

As reported in The Guardian

Yet another mind boggling Vatican attempt at deflection of blame for the gross negligence of the Roman Catholic Church to deal with child sexual abuse by its priests.

What is most disgraceful is the failure of Pope Benedict XVI to put in place mandatory child protection procedures across the global Roman Catholic Church. To this day the only global policy which exists is designed to ensure that the Vatican decides how each case is to be handled. There is no obligation for church personnel to report child abuse by clergy to civil authorities.

More of the same then. Its someone else fault…it’s the gays…the media…the decadence of modern society…anyone and everyone is to blame apart from the Catholic Church hierarchy.

The Holy See (The Pope) continues to look to scapegoat others. What neither this Pope nor his predecessor has done is explain why their institution has acted to cover up the rape and abuse of children by its clergy. This cover up is no local or national phenomenon; instead it is the result of a long standing negligent failure on the part of the highest authorities in the Catholic Church.

As Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, the Sydney Bishop who headed efforts to deal with child abuse in the Australian Church said back in 2007, the Catholic Church is still not serious about confronting sexual abuse, only “managing” it. Link here.

Its not the first time the Vatican and senior bishops have used this vile attempt at deflecting blame as the following excerpt from Beyond Belief  shows.

Six months earlier, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected Pope Benedict XIV. The new Pope was reported as having denounced the Harry Potter novels as a corrupting influence on children and had in the past blamed the media for the scandal of clerical sexual abuse, but he had nothing to say about the Ferns Report.

In The US, Bishops had often sought to create a link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.  After a crisis meeting at the Vatican in 2002, the head of the US Bishops Conference Bishop Wilton Gregory clearly expressed that view. “It is most importantly a struggle, to make sure that the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men. Not only is it not dominated by homosexual men, but that the candidates that we receive are healthy in every possible way, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually”, he said.

One month after the Ferns Report was published the Vatican issued a new policy on gays and the priesthood. The document declared that men with what it called “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies could not be ordained. Whilst it did not mention the sex abuse scandals it was widely believed to be in part a response to the issue. It caused widespread dismay amongst victim support organisations, many of whom believed that the Vatican was once again sidestepping its responsibility for the scandals and scapegoating gay men as the cause of the problem in the first place.

The Ferns Report had researched this issue, having formed an expert group of clinicians with specific experience of working with priests who had sexually abused children. The group was unanimous in its view that homosexuality is not a factor in increasing the risk to children.  It would be seen as a factor in increasing the risk to adolescent boys but no more than a heterosexual priest would be a risk to adolescent girls.

One member of the group, Joseph Sullivan said, “It’s easy to make the link between someone abusing boys and being homosexual but would we call someone who sexually abuses 12 and 13 year old girls heterosexual? “No, we wouldn’t; we’d call them a child abuser.”

I was asked to speak about this at an event organised by Voice of the Faithful, a lay Catholic organisation established to show solidarity with victims of clerical sexual abuse and ensure greater participation of lay people in the power structures of the church.

“Any church that sees itself as the true church of Christ must surely embrace truth and be open to its own failings,” I said. “The naming of truth should never be seen as a challenge to the church of Christ. Surely Christians have a duty to respond to hurt with care, compassion, integrity, honesty, courage and love?”

“As a man who often reflects on my own relationship with God I find myself questioning where Christ would be in this debate. Would He be seated in Rome telling us these scandals are the fault of the corruption of western society, of an anti-catholic media, of greedy victims, of homosexuals, of all and any but those who ignored the truth and moved offender after offender to places where any sane and objective person would know there could only be one consequence; more rape and abuse?”

“Or would Christ be here? What or who would Christ clear from the Temple in this third millennium?”

“How can it be that a Church Hierarchy who comments upon the content of a children’s film can fail to comment upon a report commissioned by this State and authored by a former Supreme Court Judge that found Rome culpable in the rape and abuse of Irish children? How can the highest authority in the Roman Catholic Church see fit to suggest that Harry Potter is a threat to the development of children yet refuse to acknowledge findings by this sovereign State that the institution he heads has permitted the rape and abuse of children?”

“How can a church that speaks in the name of Christ fail to respond to the hurt of its people, its faithful, who are struggling to understand how this could have happened?”

It appears little has changed. Not exactly a shock I know. Still though, I don’t know which I feel most, mad or sickened.