Abuse Tracker

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
CBS 3

[with video]

By CBS 3 Springfield News

The group SNAP, Survivors of those Abused by Priests are protesting a Maryland Judge's sentencing of Aaron Cote.

Cote was charged with molesting a western mass boy in Maryland in 2001 and 2002.
Last week he was given 10 years probation, but no jail time.

SNAP Spokesperson Bill Nash says, "We're very concerned about that, he's a very dangerous man."

Nash says the Judge's sentence is reckless, especially since Cote is a Chicopee native.

UNITED STATES
Mormon Matters

by Jeff Breinholt on September 23, 2009 in Mormon.

The chagrin would be immediate from reading these words in a law book:

For five years, in defendant’s capacity as a schoolteacher, neighbor, and secretary to the Bishop of the Mormon Church, defendant molested numerous boys in Santa Clara County. As charged in this case, he touched the private parts of four boys who knew him variously as a family friend from church, a teacher in kindergarten and grades two and three, and a home-school religion teacher.

So starts People v. Harward [1]. It’s no joke. This language, taken from a real court case, likely sent shivers down the spines of the Mormons who read it, not to mention Church leaders. Is there a reason to worry? Is Mormon leadership bound to contend with the same public relations nightmare that plagued the Roman Catholics over the last decade?
To answer this question, I set out to look at the extent of any LDS sex abuse that has reached American courtrooms. I then did the same for religions with whom the Mormons are commonly confused – the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Christian Scientists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Voice from the Desert

By Vinnie Nauheimer

Dehumanization

Starving, gassing, burning, hacking, bombing and mutilating on a large scale are all well documented crimes against humanity. In each case humanity reflects on how inhuman man can be to his fellow man, decries and tries to destroy the offending dictators or regimes and puts up a memorial in the hope it doesn’t happen again. The travesties generally last no longer than the time span of the despot’s rule: I.e. Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin etc. There is however, one very notable exception. That exception is the rape, sodomization and molestation of children by the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. There is ample documentation showing this carnage has been carried out unabated for centuries!

The focal point of this essay is not the pedophile priest, for we know what he is. He is a sick twisted deviant who relishes despoiling innocence. He is the predator. An animal who exists for his next meal: despoiling an innocent child. Like the jackal, he preys on the weak and vulnerable in order to feed his sick insatiable appetite. This examination will focus on the following: How the pederast became an integral part of the clergy, why their handlers, the bishops, allow these jackals free reign to prey on children, and the causes for the utter silence of the priesthood at large on the subject of the sexual abuse of children by priests.

What do you call a man who knowingly allows a malevolent individual to prey on children? What term can be coined for a man who upon finding out that a perverted priest has violated a child, moves said priest to new hunting grounds? How do you address someone who knowingly sends a serial child molester into a parish with an elementary school? What term can accurately describe a man who sends a child raping priest out of his country to prey upon the children of poor indigent people; whose only hope in life is an afterlife in heaven? Sadly, there is one answer to all of these questions, you call him bishop!

CONNECTICUT
Connecticut Post

By Michael P. Mayko
STAFF WRITER
Updated: 11/30/2009

Catholics in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport -- and the public at large -- may get their first look at how Bishops Walter Curtis and Edward Egan dealt with accusations that diocesan priests abused children over more than three decades when nearly 12,000 pages of secret documents are released Tuesday.

Unsealing the documents ends a seven-year-long legal battle that began in state Superior Court when several newspapers filed suit to force their release. The dispute wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where justices last month refused to hear the diocese's appeal to keep the documents private.

The battle is now over.

VATICAN CITY
Beliefnet

Monday November 30, 2009
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican is facing calls to apologize -- as yet unanswered -- for the large-scale child abuse by Irish Catholic priests detailed in a damning government report.

The new report, issued by a commission charged with probing allegations involving the Archdiocese of Dublin between 1975 and 2004, revealed a pattern of clergy abuse that was covered up by the Church, at times with the collusion of the Irish police.

"The pope should come here and make an apology to the victims and the Irish nation, and he should be contrite and sincere," John Kelly, one of the founders of the Survivors of Child Abuse association, told The Irish Times.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Fergus Finlay

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

LILYBAEUM no longer exists.

It used to be a small port in Sicily and had a fort occupied by the ancient Carthaginians.

There’s a town on the site now, called Marsala.

But oddly enough, even though it doesn’t exist, the town of Lilybaeum has one thing left. It has an archbishop.

Numana, on the other hand, is still there. It’s a tiny little town on the east coast of Italy. There’s nothing there really except a small pebble beach. Except, of course, that Numana also has an archbishop.

The Archbishop of Lilybaeum lives on the Navan Road in Dublin 7. His name is Dr Giuseppe Leanza, and he is the Apostolic Nuncio in Ireland. His predecessor in that post, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, is the titular Archbishop of Numana, and was also, for seven years, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland.

Both of these men were made archbishops of places that don’t need an archbishop in order to give them status and importance in the church. The titles don’t require them to undertake any pastoral responsibilities, they’re just a career move.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

RONAN McGREEVY and PATSY McGARRY

THE PAPAL Nuncio in Ireland has denied suggestions that he showed contempt for the institutions of the State by not responding to the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

In his first public comments since the publication of the commission report last week, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza told The Irish Times that his actions “cannot be taken as such because it is not a contempt against the work of the commission, which we respect”.

Dr Leanza said he was aware of the anger among Irish Catholics about the contents of the report, which found that successive archbishops had responded to clerical child sex abuse within the diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent

DIPLOMACY: THE DEPARTMENT of Foreign Affairs has rejected calls for the papal nuncio to be expelled from Ireland for ignoring requests for information from the Dublin commission.

The department said last night that “creating a diplomatic incident is not the solution”.

It is considering a number of options over concerns prompted by the Dublin diocesan report, including the disclosure that the nuncio’s office failed to respond to correspondence from the commission.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

KATHRYN HAYES

BISHOP DONAL MURRAY: PRESSURE ON the Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, to resign in the wake of the Dublin diocesan report continued to mount last night, despite a letter of support issued by a group of lay people and priests working in the diocese.

About 80 people attended a meeting in Limerick on Sunday to discuss his future, just hours after Dr Murray told Mass-goers at St Joseph’s Church that he would be guided by the priests and people of the diocese as to whether his presence was a “help or a hindrance”.

In a letter of support published yesterday and signed by eight people, claiming to represent the lay people and priests working in the diocese of Limerick who attended the meeting, the group said it would be “a retrograde step” for the continuing development of safeguarding children if Dr Murray stepped down.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

BISHOP MURRAY CONTROVERSY: BISHOP OF Killaloe Willie Walsh, has said calls for the resignation of Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray were based on a “gross misreading” of the Dublin diocesan report and warned against a desire “to get a head on a plate”.

Asked on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland yesterday whether a bishop criticised in the report should consider resigning, Bishop Walsh said: “Yes, if it is true.”

He said: “But I do know at the moment there has been a gross misreading of the Dublin report in relation to Bishop Murray and there has been a very serious misreading of that. I appeal to people to, if they’re going to speak on that issue, to study very carefully exactly the terms of the Dublin report.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

RONAN McGREEVY

INTERVIEW: The papal nuncio says the Vatican’s lack of response to the commission was not intended as a snub

THE PAPAL nuncio has defended his decision not to reply to the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, saying its contents did not pertain to him.

In his first interview since the commission findings were published on Thursday last, Italian-born Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza told The Irish Times he did not “feel in the right position” to reply to the draft report of the commission which was sent to him earlier this year, as he only became the papal nuncio in April 2008.

Speaking at the nunciature on the Navan Road, Dublin, yesterday afternoon, he said he was only asked if he had comments on an extract from report. These extracts concerned the nunciature and aspects of canon law. He said he was not asked to present any documentation to the commission.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FINTAN O'TOOLE Opinion

OPINION: If Bishop Willie Walsh doesn’t get it, what hope is there for the rest of the institutional church?

BISHOP WILLIE Walsh is a very fine person. Over the years, he has been the most important voice within the Irish Catholic hierarchy for humility and openness. He was the first bishop to really understand the depth of the moral crisis caused by the church’s cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy. He has since been the only bishop prepared to engage with the need for a radical transformation of the priesthood and of the power structures that made the cover-up not merely possible but inevitable.

This makes it all the more painful to have to ask a despairing question: if Willie Walsh doesn’t get it, what hope is there for the rest of the institutional church?

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE BYRNE

Our subservient way of thinking as a people bestows impunity on those in positions of power

‘IT IS the deaf people that create the lies.’ Irish proverbs are full of phrases about the power of silence.

Fr Donal Gallagher from the Dublin parish of St Peter’s in Phibsboro, horrifically exploited this cancerous Irish culture of saying nothing over a 20 year period.

The Dublin diocesan report noted that after Gallagher had finished sexually abusing a girl in the sanctity of the confession box, he would “wash his hands in the altar bowl and dry them with the napkin”. She was nine.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

DOES BISHOP Willie Walsh realise how much he has let down the Catholic laity? Has the papal nuncio any conception that the majesty of the Roman Catholic Church won’t cut it any more? The days of bending the knee in Ireland to kiss the ring of men who were, at best, indifferent or, at worst, compliant in covering up and perpetuating the abuse of children have passed. The last paragraph of the Murphy report into the clerical rape and sexual abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese quotes one victim, Marie Murray, as saying: “within the institutional church there has been no change of heart, only a change of strategy”. It could be dismissed as the harsh judgment of a woman who was treated abominably.

But the commission of inquiry itself raises the question: Is she right? The behaviour of various spokesman since its publication would suggest that she is.

The church and political reaction to the Murphy report may be as damaging as the findings themselves. They are corroborative of the culture. New and detailed legislation is now required, along with an effective reporting regime and strict criminal enforcement. The task facing the Roman Catholic hierarchy is more fundamental, involving a re-establishment of trust with its followers; the acceptance of personal responsibility for past failures and the ending of a culture of denial and cover-ups.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARY RAFTERY

ANALYSIS: Bishop Donal Murray’s lack of action resulted in the destruction of many young lives

WHEN BISHOPS start talking about heads on plates you know it is the specific spectre of John the Baptist they seek to conjure up – the forces of vindictive secularism in the shape of wicked Herod and his wanton progeny hounding the saintly prophet to his doom.

Bishop Willie Walsh should know better. The head on a plate he referred to on radio yesterday morning is that of his fellow bishop Donal Murray, currently under siege for his mishandling of complaints of child sexual abuse by priests during the period up to 1996 during which Bishop Murray was an auxiliary bishop in the Dublin archdiocese.

Bishop Murray is no John the Baptist. He is a man whose lack of action resulted in the destruction of many young lives. His failure to protect children in no fewer than three dioceses from the sexual assaults of paedophile priest Thomas Naughton is not just “inexcusable”, as the Dublin report puts it, it is unconscionable.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

EAMONN CONWAY

OPINION: There are many respects in which Bishop Murray has served the Irish church and its people well

THE EASIEST thing to do in the present circumstances is to keep silent to avoid causing offence or attracting adverse comment. But as we have been reminded by the reports on child sex abuse, silence does not necessarily serve truth. Nor can one wrong be righted by another.

Having worked closely both with victims and perpetrators, I am in no way oblivious to the horror of this crime and its lasting damage. Over the past 10 years I have been openly critical in particular of the failure of church leadership to acknowledge the systemic and cultural weaknesses in the governance of the church which colluded with and facilitated child sexual abuse.

Bishop Donal Murray has in effect handed over to the people and priests of his diocese the decision on whether he should remain. Theologically, this can be justified; canonically, he must be satisfied he can lead his diocese effectively.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Ossory

Statement of Bishop Séamus Freeman, SAC., Bishop of Ossory, in response to the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

I take the opportunity to welcome the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin, published yesterday. This Report will help all of us to face up to our responsibilities in being transparent in all dealings with reports and complaints of child abuse. I personally want to apologise to all who have suffered in any way from the effects of this tragic abuse of trust and subsequent cover-up.

I also want to assure the people of the Diocese of Ossory that our Diocesan Safeguarding Children Policy is fully compliant with the current Statutory and Church Guidelines and we welcome the on-going monitoring of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Killala

THE report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin makes
disturbing reading. Its publication has brought this dark chapter in the life of the Church in Ireland back to centre stage in public debate. It has reawakened the pain of the past in victims and believers alike. The abuse, suffering and harm caused to so many children is a source of profound regret.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry

I am deeply saddened and shamed by the content of the Judge Murphy report into child sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin. I want to offer my sincere sympathy and regret to those who have experienced child sexual abuse, even though I realise I can never fully understand the depth of their suffering and pain. The report documents evil and criminal activity and highlights a dreadful failure to respond to it appropriately.

I renew my appeal to all who were sexually abused by clergy to come forward if they have not already done so. I assure them that they will be treated with respect and dignity.

The Diocese of Kerry is fully committed to safeguarding children and young people. We have put in place policies, procedures and personnel, in every parish, to see to it that children and young people are cared for as they participate in the various Church activities in their parish.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora

Statement by Bishop Martin Drennan [pdf]

Statement by Bishop Martin Drennan [Word]

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns

The Report is also the occasion for reliving the pain and harm that was brought to light in our own diocese, and for remembering all who suffered at the hands of some of our priests. As Bishop I wish to apologise again without reservation to all who have suffered abuse and to their families. I hope that this report may provide victims with a sense that their story is believed and that this may help them come to terms with the painful memories of their abuse.

The diocese is not in receipt of any concerns regarding child protection and its personnel—or former personnel—which it has not shared with its own advisory panel, the Gardaí and the HSE. The Gardaí and HSE have confirmed this to be true also. All directives or recommendations which the diocese has received from the Holy See, the Advisory Panel, the Gardaí and HSE have been implemented.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin

I acknowledge the publication of the Report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation. It is important and necessary in bringing into full light the painful truth of the past and in helping to forge a better future for those who have been sexually abused as children.

The weeks which have passed since the publication of the Ryan Report have been for members of the Catholic Church and indeed for everyone throughout Ireland and beyond a time of unprecedented shock, despondency and soul-searching. Those abused were our children. We were their church and we let them down. In failing to adequately act on the allegations of abuse suffering was added upon suffering.

Let me, add my own words to those of Archbishop Martin in expressing my horror and revulsion at the Dublin Report’s findings – My horror and revulsion at the abuse that occurred and the failed responses it documents.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Cork and Ross

Bishop John Buckley of Cork and Ross has made the following response to the issues raised in the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese's handing of child sexual abuse complaints:-

We are all very saddened by the terrible events outlined in the Dublin Report. Our first thoughts are with those who have suffered. Innocent and vulnerable children have suffered greatly as a result of a betrayal of trust by some clergy. Their families too have been affected deeply. We must constantly remind ourselves that what we are suffering in these days bears no comparison to the hurt, the lasting damage and the distress of the victims and their families.

It is extremely regrettable that, in the past, the Church's systems failed to address this problem adequately. We must do all in our power to ensure that the systems now in place will replace the inefficient management of the past and will provide a just and caring response to people who have suffered as a result.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois

The Report from the Dublin Commission of Enquiry into child abuse by clergy brings home once again the extent of suffering caused to innocent children by priests who abused them. What makes this criminal activity most abhorrent is that it was perpetrated by people with a sacred calling who betrayed the trust placed in them. It must be accepted that church leaders put the good of the Church as Institution before the welfare of the abused and failed to act in an appropriate manner.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Achonry

The publication of the Dublin Report brings home to us again that terrible crimes were committed by priests against children over many years. The trauma suffered and the scars that remain are immense. Our hearts go out to all victims of child abuse, in every diocese as well as Dublin. Many victims did not get the hearing they deserved and complaints were not acted upon swiftly or competently by diocesan authorities, and we are deeply sorry about that.

The Diocese of Achonry is working very closely with the HSE to ensure we are fully compliant with the National Child Protection guidelines. We work closely too with An Garda Síochána. All priests have completed Safeguarding training with the HSE , and the training of lay representatives from all parishes is nearing completion. The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church is now established and has promulgated new Guidelines ‘Safeguarding Children’, and the Diocesan Safeguarding Committee is working to ensure these guidelines are put in place throughout the diocese.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Armagh

I am shocked and ashamed by the abuse of children described in the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin, published today.

I want to apologise to all those who have been hurt and their families.
I also want to apologise to all the people of Ireland that this abuse was covered up and that the reputation of the Church was put before the safety and well-being of children.

I am deeply sorry and I am ashamed.

I also want to reassure everyone that the Church’s policy of Child Safeguarding in Ireland today puts the welfare of the child as the paramount concern. That policy is also based on the practice of full cooperation with the Statutory authorities and ongoing monitoring of the implementation of best practice in Dioceses by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin

Bishop Moriarty responds to Dublin Report
Posted on 27. Nov, 2009 by KandLe Team in Banner, K&L News, Safeguarding

Read the statement that Bishop Jim Moriarty has issued in response to the Dublin report including his own personal comments in Carlow Cathedral.

Bishop Moriarty’s Homily in Carlow Cathedral

Last week Bishop Jim Moriarty issued a statement which he asked to have read at all Masses in the diocese on 28/29th November 2009 (see full text below)

In this statement Bishop Moriarty apologised to “all who have been hurt” and acknowledged that –

“outrage has rightly been expressed in all quarters, not only that this abuse took place but also very particularly because Church authorities failed over many decades to respond properly to such criminal acts. Past practice in the matter was all too clearly seriously flawed”.
Bishop Moriarty also gave a detailed account of the current child protection policy and practices of the Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin and relevant associated information.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Limerick

[letter to the people of Limerick]

First Sunday of Advent
St Joseph’s Church
29 November 2009

The readings of the First Sunday of Advent certainly reflect our situation. The Murphy Report has left us bewildered and shaken. But our first response as Christians must be to open our hearts to the innocent children who suffered such an appalling betrayal of their trust. That abuse blighted the lives of many people. Often their faith was damaged or destroyed by men who were meant to be signs of God’s unlimited, healing love.

Our first task as a Christian community is to be a context in which survivors can feel free and encouraged to end their silence and where they can find support in their journey towards serenity and closure.

We must be a community where the safety of children is our paramount concern. The awful accounts that can be found in the Report must urge us to be always vigilant, always seeking to strengthen the safeguarding of children in our parishes, organisations and diocese.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By Donal Thornton, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

A senior minster in the Irish government has stated that the Bishop of Limerick should reconsider his position after his involvement in the Murphy report about child sex abuse became known.

The Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, has reacted to calls from the public to resign, and said he would "be guided by the priests and people of the diocese" and make a decision that is relative to their opinion.

The Bishop was criticized in the recent Murphy report about child abuse within the Catholic Church. Murray was one of the hierarchy mentioned that covered up the abuse.

MISSOURI
Quincy News

From stltoday.com: Nathan Halbach, who decided to speak out as he was terminally ill with brain cancer about how it felt to grow up knowing that his absentee father was a Roman Catholic priest, died at home in Missouri on Friday. He was 22.

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home):

"In the short time I was privileged to know Nate, it was clear that he was a special young man wounded yet filled with kindness. Despite his pain both physical and emotional there wasn't an ounce of bitterness in him. Fully aware of his deteriorating health, he talked of his plight openly but never complained. I'm sure in some ways, he was a typical young man. I, however, saw an extraordinarily mature, sensitive and caring young man whose compassion for others shone like a fresh full moon on a cloudless night.

We call on the Catholic hierarchy to honor its commitment to pay for Nate's funeral. We also hope church officials will provide counseling to his family and will permanently remove Fr. Willenborg from ministry while actively reaching out to others whom he hurt, especially those who are suffering, as Nate and his family did for so many years, in isolation and silence.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Monday, November 30, 2009

A Catholic Bishop criticised in a sickening report on the Church’s mishandling of clerical child sex abuse in Ireland was tonight given the full backing of priests and Mass-goers in his diocese.

Under-fire Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray faced mounting calls to stand down after a State inquiry branded his failure to investigate a paedophile priest "inexcusable".

Bishop Murray insisted, however, he would be judged by lay people and the priests of the Diocese.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By Anne Sheridan
LEADING Limerick politicians believe the Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, should be allowed time to consider his position and consult with priests in the diocese on whether he should resign, following the publication of the Murphy report.

Speaking on RTE's The Week in Politics last night, Minister Willie O'Dea said be believes Dr Murray, whom he knows personally, will make the "appropriate decision."

However, when asked on national radio this morning whether he believed the Bishop should go, Minister O'Dea replied: "Not really."

UNITED STATES
KUOW

11/30/2009

Today (Monday) is an important day for people in the Northwest who were sexually abused by Jesuit priests. It's a key deadline for the bankruptcy case filed by the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus.

Bankruptcy was the Jesuits' response last February to the large number of claims for compensation filed by victims of sexual abuse. Portland Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris set November 30 as the deadline for people to file new claims. The aim is to find just how many victims there are. That's not clear yet. But advocates like Robert Fontana of Voices of the Faithful in Yakima, Washington, are encouraging victims to get moving. He wants the Jesuits to do more to reach out.

Fontana: "They need to put the pictures of these people who have abused, they need to put them out and they need to do it within the Catholic community, in Spanish and in English. They need to do it especially in the Native American communities."

MEMPHIS (TN)
WLBT

By Lori Brown

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - Despite renewed efforts by the Church of God in Christ to prevent sexual abuse within their congregations, a Memphis church is letting a musician charged with statutory rape keep his job.

Dwayne Wilson, 25, of Greater St. Mark Church in Southwest Memphis is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old choir member.

A court document says the girl's mother saw a man under her daughter's bed, and the teen's grandmother saw him climb out a bedroom window.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

The "Murphy Commission" report on the handling of sex-abuse complaints in the Dublin archdiocese was particularly rough on one former auxiliary: Bishop Donal Murray, who now heads the Limerick diocese. The commission saw his handling of one priest, Father Tom Naughton-- now a convicted molester-- as "inexcusable." In a Limerick Today radio interview, Bishop Murray defended his record.

When he first heard a complaint against Naughton, the bishop recalled, it was only a complaint that he was too chummy with his altar boys. The parishioners who brought that complaint, the bishop continued, "weren't suggesting anything wrong was going on." (Well then what were they suggesting? Why were they lodging a complaint with the auxiliary bishop?)

Despite that reassurance, Bishop Murray didn't let the matter drop. He asked the pastor about Naughton's behavior, and was reassured again. So he asked the pastor to question other parishioners and provide a fuller report. The pastor did so, and (as Bishop Murray reports) gave an extremely positive report on the young priest. So then Bishop Murray called Naughton in, to remind him that " you have to be very careful about anything you are doing that is causing parents to be concerned."

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

I recently heard a presentation about quantum shifts in consciousness as well as in technology that are appearing around the world. The speaker discussed nanotechnology and environmental breakthroughs, such as edible clothing in New Zealand, and window panes in Scotland that extract energy from the wind and sun. He was particularly excited about recent scientific discussions about the metamorphosis of a butterfly. ...

As a professor, I invested more time and effort to research innovative teaching practices and scholarship, and I had less involvement with parish activities. During the summer of 2002, I participated in a week long program called the Collegium. It was a gathering of faculty who worked at Catholic Universities. We discussed various topics related to academic life in the context of Catholic universities. During this time, the clergy abuse scandal from Boston was in the news daily.

My flashbacks began around that time. Some memories of my abuse were triggered by seeing my sons sleeping shirtless; they were about the age I was when I was abused. I had some basic and crude understanding of my abuse at that point, which I mistakenly interpreted as life experiences that I could manage or had processed indirectly in previous therapy related to family of origin issues such as alcoholism or relationship with my father.

Later that summer, I called a phone number on the L.A. Archdiocesan webpage to let someone know what I thought s/he must want to know in order to help others. I got a message that the call could not be completed. I searched the webpage for an e-mail contact or other phone number to call someone about my report. I e-mailed the webmaster, the only contact I could find contact, and the webmaster reported back to me that he had forwarded the information to the appropriate person. On my birthday, I received a call from the diocesan Victims’ Assistance Coordinator, who asked me what I wanted.

IRELAND
Herald

By Terry Prone

Monday November 30 2009

Judge Yvonne Murphy didn't find a ring of paedophile priests in operation in the Dublin Archdiocese. True.

But she found "worrying connections" between clerics who were, at various stages, convicted of child abuse.

Dr Diarmuid Martin spotted the same disturbing connections. They bothered him enough to get him to make a request to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation to ask them to investigate the possibility of such a ring.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
KWMU

KWMU staff (2009-11-30)
ST. LOUIS (St. Louis Public Radio) - A suburban St. Louis man whose father was a Roman Catholic priest has died of brain cancer at age 22, according to today's New York Times.

After he was diagnosed with the terminal illness, Nathan Halbach of O'Fallon, Mo. decided to speak out about growing up knowing his father was a priest.

The Rev. Henry Willenborg was suspended from his position as a parish priest in Wisconsin after a Times article published last month revealed his liaisons with women.

IRELAND
Irish Health

[Posted: Mon 30/11/2009 by Niall Hunter, Editor]

The support group One in Four has expressed deep concern about the official response to date to the Murphy report on the handling of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Diocese.

It says leaders from both Church and State have failed to grasp the fundamental finding of the report that there was a deliberate policy of concealment of the activities of sex offenders and that children were sexually abused as a result.

"This is not about failings or learning curves. This about the reckless endangerment of children in a calculated, purposeful strategy to protect the institutional Church," One in Four said.

IRELAND
The Donegal News

By Catherine Cook

THE Bishop of Raphoe has apologised to the victims and families of child sexual abuse in the Diocese of Raphoe.

On Friday, Bishop Philip Boyce issued a statement following the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Archdiocese of Dublin. He added that he would welcome an investigation in the Raphoe Diocese similar to that carried out in Dublin.

In the report, Fr Patrick Maguire was named as a serial sexual abuser and it has been confirmed by the Bishop that he served in the Diocese of Raphoe between 1974 and 1975. He was then moved to the Dublin Archdiocese where he continued his sexual abuse of children.

IRELAND
Herald

Monday November 30 2009

Of all the responses from Church leaders to the Murphy Report, that of Bishop Donal Murray's is surely the most extraordinary.

The former Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, whose behaviour in dealing with allegations against priests is described as 'inexcusable', said he would now be "guided by the priests and people" of his diocese in deciding what to do now.

Did we hear him right? Since when in the history of the Catholic Church in this country did a bishop defer to his flock on how he should act?

IRELAND
Herald

By Cormac Looney

Monday November 30 2009

A GARDA investigation into the possibility of a paedophile ring in the Dublin Archdiocese is centering on two priests who abused the same child.

Fears are growing that an organised network of abuse was established among sex-abuser priests in the capital. These follow reports that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin asked gardai to formally investigate if such a ring existed.

The probe is centering on the abuse perpetrated by former priests Bill Carney and Francis McCarthy, a source said.

IRELAND
BBC News

A Catholic bishop has said a "public trial" is taking place after the publication of a report on the Dublin diocese handling of child abuse.

Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe argued that calls for Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick to resign were based on a misreading of the Murphy report.

He said a "public trial" was taking place following the publication of that report on Thursday.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Monday, 30 November 2009

The archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has asked the Garda to investigate whether a clerical paedophile ring was operating in the archdiocese.

Dr Diarmuid Martin made the request to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigations after he examined files on paedophile priests in recent years. He was disturbed by close connections between a number of clerics who were later convicted of child abuse, according to sources, and asked gardai to investigate.

The priests included Fr Bill Carney and Fr Francis McCarthy, neither of whom are any longer in the priesthood, and Fr Patrick Maguire, a Columban priest who is living under the strict supervision of his order. The three are among 46 priests named in the damning report by Judge Yvonne Murphy which found “no direct evidence” of a paedophile ring, but found “worrying connections” between a number of priests.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Monday November 30 2009

THE theological term "mental reservation" permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying.

This definition was thus defined by the Commission of Investigation into the Archdiocese of Dublin after it quizzed Cardinal Desmond Connell on his usage of the term.

In the course of his controversial evidence, Cardinal Connell said it was a concept "developed and much discussed (by and in the Catholic Church) over the centuries".

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Monday November 30 2009

SINCE the publication of the Murphy report, a new debate has begun. Not about the details of clerical sex abuse, horrifying though they are; not even about the disclosures of deliberate cover-ups or the bizarre entry into common currency of the phrase "mental reservation", which to any person of normal intelligence means giving oneself permission to tell a lie.

No, the debate has moved on. Now it is about the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland. But to make any future certain -- one might almost say, to make it possible -- the Church must repudiate its long-standing "culture" of secrecy and arrogance.

It has already changed in significant ways, not always desirable ways. For the monolith has broken under the weight of the scandal.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

November 30, 2009

A government inquiry into clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin has strongly criticized Bishop Donal Murray for his handling of abuse allegations. The 69-year-old prelate, who served as Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin from 1982 to 1996 and is now Bishop of Limerick, is facing mounting calls to submit his resignation.

Bishop Murray “handled a number of complaints and suspicions badly,” the report concluded. “For example, he did not deal properly with the suspicions and concerns that were expressed to him in relation to Fr Naughton. When, a short time later, factual evidence of Fr Naughton’s abusing emerged in another parish Bishop Murray’s failure to reinvestigate the earlier suspicions was inexcusable. Bishop Murray did, however, accept in 2002 that he had not dealt well with the situation.”

UNITED STATES
BeyondChron

by Tommi Avicolli-Mecca‚ Nov. 30‚ 2009

Just more ammunition for the movement to tax churches that engage in political activities: Bishop Richard J. Malone of Maine contributed $553,608.27 to overturn a gay marriage law in his state, money he got from some 50 dioceses and archdioceses, not to mention individual bishops, throughout the country. That law went down on November 3, 53 to 47%.

According to a report in the National Catholic Reporter, Malone’s diocese donated $286,000 to Stand For Marriage Maine, the right-wing group that led the campaign to repeal gay marriage. He also raised an additional $86,000 from special collections at Masses during a weekend in September. Just how legal is passing the donation plate for a political cause at a religious service?

CANADA
The Telegram

STEVE BARTLETT
The Telegram

Second in a two-part series

Paul Vivian says his nightmares stopped after Father Des McGrath died this summer.

"(I felt) an enormous sense of relief," the Corner Brook native says. "And I went for a walk by myself outside of my house around the block for the first time in 10 years. I knew I was safe."

Vivian, who has lived in Toronto since the mid-'80s, says he was sexually abused by the priest as a teenager in the late 1970s and early '80s on the west coast of Newfoundland.

IRELAND
Breaking News

30/11/2009
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has said the special treatment given by gardaí in the past to members of the clergy suspected of child abuse will never happen again.

He made the remarks in response to the Murphy report published last week, which criticised some members of the force for treating priests with undue deference.

Commissioner Murphy apologised for failures of the Garda Síochána to properly investigate some cases brought to their attention, but said that none of the gardaí criticised in the report are currently serving.

UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: November 29, 2009

Nathan Halbach, who decided to speak out as he was terminally ill with brain cancer about how it felt to grow up knowing that his absentee father was a Roman Catholic priest, died at home in Missouri on Friday. He was 22.

Mr. Halbach said he knew there were other children like him who had been fathered and abandoned by priests, but it was such a taboo to talk about it that he wanted to give them a voice.

In an interview this summer at his home in O’Fallon, he said of his father: “He and my mom had a relationship and they were in love at the time, and they had me out of that relationship, but I never received any of that love at an age I could remember it. I have so few memories of him, I’ve met him so few times, it’s just not been what I had hoped for.”

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Maurice Hayes

Monday November 30 2009

THANK God for Diarmuid Martin; thank God for the courage and persistence of the victims of clerical child abuse who have been vindicated; thanks too for Judge Yvonne Murphy and her team for drawing back the veil and shining a light into the darkest passages of church administration.

Without minimising in any way the suffering of victims or the criminal culpability of the abuser, the public sense of outrage attaches mostly to the cover-up by diocesan authorities over many years. Indeed, for many victims, their treatment by church authorities added not only insult, but additional pain and suffering to the original injury.

The diocesan authorities were proved to be just as insensitive, just as callous, and, in their own way, just as abusive as the original offenders. The fact that there was an abuse of power and office by those who put the defence of an institution above the protection of children made it, if anything, even more offensive.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By JOHN COONEY

Monday November 30 2009

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Cardinal Desmond Connell have been in direct personal contact since last Thursday when the explosive Commission Report into the Archdiocese of Dublin's cover-ups of clerical child sex abuse ignited the biggest challenge ever to the moral authority and credibility of both the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy.

Naturally enough, a talking point between the retired Prince of the Roman Church and his successor as head of Ireland's Dublin archdiocese, was the fate of former Dublin auxiliary, Bishop Donal Murray.

In a Church system which has practised the cult of secrecy to near perfection and has upgraded this anti-democratic practise to the status of an eleventh commandment on top of the original 10 scripturally decreed by God, it was only by chance I found out that the two leading churchmen have been talking in recent days.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LORNA SIGGINS Western Correspondent

CLONFERT: BISHOP of Clonfert Dr John Kirby said yesterday he was “shocked and saddened” by the findings of the Murphy report, which he described as “horrible”.

However, Dr Kirby said he did not support calls on Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray to resign.

A south Galway priest in Dr Kirby’s Clonfert diocese was among those calling for the resignation of Dr Murray and others yesterday.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

ONE IN FOUR REACTION: ONE IN Four founder Colm O’Gorman has called for the remit of the commission investigating clerical child abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin to be extended to include every diocese in the State.

He felt this was necessary as bishops were patrons of State-run schools in each diocese and child protection practices were “likely to be as bad” as those exposed in the Dublin report.

He also said that “it seems clear that within the Irish church, and especially the Vatican, there is no desire to remove bishops who were so clearly negligent” where child protection was concerned.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FIONA McCANN

INCIDENT AT MASS: A WOMAN interrupted the 12.30pm Mass in a northside Dublin church yesterday to denounce the Catholic Church in the wake of the Dublin diocesan report.

The woman, who did not identify herself, shouted from the congregation before taking to the altar directly after parish priest Msgr Dermot Clarke delivered his sermon at the church in Aughrim Street.

Speaking from the altar steps, she called for the church to “take your paedophiles and go back to Rome”, and told a hushed congregation that they had no further reason to attend Mass in a Catholic Church.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

KITTY HOLLAND

MASS-GOERS' REACTION: DESPITE REVULSION at the abuse of children chronicled in the Murphy report, Mass-goers in Dublin remained largely loyal to their own priests yesterday, while some directed anger at “the bishops” and the Vatican.

Desmond Howe and his wife Theresa were at 11.30am Mass at St Francis Xavier Church on Gardiner Street. They felt sorry for priests ministering today.

“But any bishop involved should resign. All credit to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for his strength, but I’m very disappointed in other bishops,” said Mr Howe.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

VICTIM CRITICISM: A SECOND bishop of the five still in office who feature in the Dublin diocesan report published last Thursday was criticised last night following a statement he read at Masses in his diocese yesterday.

Abuse victim Marie Collins said she found it remarkable that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty should make no reference to his own role in the Dublin report, in the message he had read at Masses yesterday.

In 1993, Bishop Moriarty received a complaint about Fr Edmondus concerning the priest’s contact with young children. This was the priest who abused Marie Collins in 1960 when she was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

AS THE Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, announced yesterday that he would “be guided by the priests and people of the diocese” on whether he should resign, the city’s most senior politician has indicated that he should.

Speaking on RTÉ television’s The Week in Politics programme last night, Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea said of Bishop Murray that “he will make the appropriate decision”.

Asked if he believed Bishop Murray should resign, Mr O’Dea said “I know Donal Murray personally and I have always had a very good relationship with him, and I find him a decent man. I must say that I am bitterly disappointed to read what I have read in the Murphy report.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has said calls for the resignation of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, are based on a “gross misreading” of certain parts of the Murphy report into clerical child abuse.

Bishop Murray has faced calls for his resignation after the report, published last week, described his handling of a particular allegation as “inexcusable”.

At a mass in Limerick yesterday, Bishop Murray told parishioners he would "be guided by the priests and people of the diocese” on whether he should resign.

IRELAND
Corkman

Monday November 30 2009

A Catholic bishop has hit out over calls for a colleague to resign in the wake of a report into clerical child sex abuse and cover-ups.

Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh refused to back growing demands for senior clergy named and shamed to stand down and claimed damning findings were being misread.

Pressure has mounted for Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray to resign after an inquiry into the handling of child abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese branded his failure to investigate a paedophile priest inexcusable.

IRELAND
RTE News

[with audio]

Monday, 30 November 2009 12:04
Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh has said that calls for the resignation of Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray are based on a misreading of the Murphy report into clerical child sex abuse.

Bishop Walsh refused to back growing demands for senior clergy criticised in the report to stand down and said damning findings were being misread.

Pressure has mounted on Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray to resign after an inquiry into the handling of child abuse cases in the Catholic Dublin Archdiocese branded his failure to investigate a paedophile priest inexcusable.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

This liars’ charter has bled into secular life and covers everything from adultery to tax avoidance, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE

AT LAST we have it. We’ve waited for years for an explanation as to why the Irish are so mysterious, creative and spiritual, as well as being such effective communicators. We have had endless discussions about this rather pleasing problem, and books have been written about it, and foreign professors have come over and told us how fabulous we are, without ever really explaining why. The Brits shook their colonial heads in wonder at the Taig capacity both to lie and to charm. We have always blamed imperialism. But now we have the real explanation – it is mental reservation.

You know how it is. We have produced the most wonderful literature in the world – Wilde, Joyce, Beckett, blah, blah, blah. Sure you can fill in the gaps yourselves at this stage, and David McSavage did a nice job on Irish artistic heritage on RTÉ television last Monday night. Yet we do have a couple of tiny blindspots, in areas such as banking, honest politics, running a health service, teaching our children to read, planning, paying taxes, and stuff like that.

How to reconcile these two opposing phenomena? Well, this is where mental reservation comes in. Mental reservation is a happy place that you can go to in your head when reality starts to disagree with you. Mental reservation is an elegant and fluid concept as explained in the Murphy report on child abuse in the Dublin diocese: “It permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying.”

IRELAND
Forth

Mon 30 Nov, 2009
The appalling abuse of children by Catholic priests should not be allowed to make children of us all, says Jason Walsh

The publication last week of the Murphy report into clerical child abuse has revealed not only a Church more interested in maintaining its reputation than the welfare of children but also a state that had no interest in justice.

Most worrying of all, though, is the development that sees everyone as both a potential abuser or victim. Watching the Catholic hierarchy squirm under the media spotlight is one thing but, whatever the fallout for the Church, the lesson of the idea that ‘the state knows best’ being a fraud is being lost.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GORDON DEEGAN

KILLALOE STATEMENT: THE BISHOP of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has apologised for the breaches of trust that have occurred in relation to the abuse of children in his own diocese.

In a statement read out at all Masses in the diocese yesterday, Dr Walsh and the diocese’s priests expressed their own “deep sadness and shame”.

The statement said: “We acknowledge the deep pain and suffering experienced by you who have been victims of sexual abuse . . . Sexual abuse of children by any person is a heinous crime. That these crimes were committed by some of our priest colleagues is an appalling betrayal of the precious trust which has traditionally been given to us as priests.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent

Monday November 30 2009

JUSTICE Minister Dermot Ahern has issued seven former residents of industrial schools with certificates to clarify they do not have a criminal record.

Thousands had feared that time spent in industrial schools, often as young children, meant they had officially been branded as criminals.

Former mayor of Clonmel, Michael O'Brien, whose searing account of his time in St Joseph's Industrial School in that town on RTE's 'Questions and Answers' touched the nation, confirmed to the Irish Independent that he was among those sent a certificate.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Shane Hickey

Monday November 30 2009

IT was a day for reflection, prayer and apologies.

As the full impact of the damning report into child sexual abuse in Dublin sank in, thousands of parishioners around the capital attended Mass for the first time since the grim details became public.

Some 300 people filed into St Mary's Pro-Cathedral where they heard Fr Damian O'Reilly express his "own personal apology, my sorrow and my shame" for what had happened to the abused children.

"We have been let down, they have been let down and hurt by the actions of those who caused them such hurt and pain. And let down and hurt when their story was not heard and covered up," Fr O'Reilly told the Mass on the first Sunday of Advent.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Barry Dugganand Aine de Paor

Monday November 30 2009

THE under-pressure Bishop of Limerick yesterday put his fate in the hands of the people and priests of his diocese.

The congregation at Dr Donal Murray's first Mass since publication of the Murphy report were told that they and the priests in his diocese would decide his future.

Speaking at 10am Mass in St Joseph's Church in Limerick city, Dr Murray acknowledged that there had been calls for his resignation.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JAMIE SMYTH and ANNE LUCEY

BISHOP OF Limerick Donal Murray has “serious questions to answer” in relation to the care and protection of children following publication of the Murphy report, a fellow bishop said yesterday.

Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey said he was sure Bishop Murray would be reflecting on his position in light of strong criticism in the report, which found his response to one allegation of abuse in Dublin was “inexcusable”. “All I can say is that any bishop today around whom there are serious questions in relation to the care and protection of children has serious questions to answer. And I’m sure that Bishop Murray is reflecting on that. I know that he has to date taken the view that he should remain, but I think he will be thinking very seriously about that,” he said.

Dr McAreavey told BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence show he would resign if he found himself in the position where his “ability to deal with these matters with credibility and integrity” was challenged.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JAMIE SMYTH

THE GRANADA Institute has welcomed the findings of the Murphy report and said no priest found to have abused a child should ever return to pastoral duties.

“Current practice dictates that in the case of a priest we would recommend that the priest be removed from ministry on a permanent basis, that he does not have any unsupervised contact with children or vulnerable adults and that he undergo an appropriate course of psychotherapeutic treatment,” Dr Joseph Duffy, director of clinical services at the Granada Institute – a sex offender treatment clinic in Dublin – said yesterday.

The Granada Institute was set up in 1994 by the Hospitaller Order of St John of God to treat child sex abusers. It has worked with 1,800 clients since its inception. About 20 per cent of the current clients at the clinic are diocesan priests or members of religious congregations.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: ONE ASPECT of the Dublin Archdiocese report which has so far received relatively little attention is its criticism of the Granada Institute, writes MARY RAFTERY

Perceived as independent, this body provides the courts with risk analysis as to how likely particular abusers are to reoffend. However, the Dublin report makes it clear that the Granada Institute is in fact run by the Catholic Church in the form of the Hospitaller Order of John of God, which the report informs us is a church authority.

It should be remembered that the St John of God order is one of the 18 congregations involved in residential childcare and party to the church-State deal on compensating survivors of institutional child abuse.

The Granada Institute itself was founded in 1994, and named after the Spanish city where the order’s founder lived and worked. It is best known for treating child abusers, and it works in partnership with the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Department of Justice and a wide variety of other services.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

DAN KEENAN Northern News Editor

NORTHERN IRELAND: THE NUMBERS affected by institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland could be in excess of 1,000, it has been estimated.

Joe Rice, a solicitor seeking compensation for those claiming they were abused as children in church and state institutions, told The Irish Times that the response to calls for an inquiry north of the Border by the Stormont Executive to date was “disappointing and frustrating”.

Last month Mr Rice wrote to the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister and to Northern secretary Shaun Woodward seeking an inquiry along the lines of those in the Republic.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

CHURCH OF IRELAND: A CHURCH of Ireland clergyman has called for the expulsion from Ireland of the papal nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanzato, over the Vatican’s failure to co-operate with the Dublin commission.

Canon Stephen Neill, son of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin the Most Rev John Neill, also called for there to be criminal investigations into all church and State officials named in the commission report.

Canon Neill, who is rector in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, and who uncovered US president Barack Obama’s Irish roots, said: “We should expel the papal nuncio who, along with his colleagues in the Vatican, including the pope and his predecessors, has demonstrated absolute contempt for the legal authorities of this State.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CHURCH-GOERS HAD predominantly positive views yesterday about Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray and the homily he delivered at Mass in St Joseph’s parish in the city about his handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations.

One man, accompanied by his toddler daughter, believed “his response is inadequate and he has to go”. Asked about Dr Murray’s view that parish councils and representative groups would decide whether he should stay on as Bishop of Limerick, he said: “I think that if you’re a leader of an organisation you have to lead by example. I’m a manager of a business, employed by somebody else. If I mess up, I have to lead by example and go.”

However, another parishioner, Pat Downs, described the bishop’s homily as “quite informative. I’m glad he made a statement here.” Asked if he thought Dr Murray should resign, he said “absolutely not”. His wife, Nuala Downs, said: “We’re not here to judge this life. God is here to judge us.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARIE O'HALLORAN in Limerick

BISHOP OF Limerick Donal Murray has said the issue of whether he resigns over his handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations “is basically a question of whether my presence here is a help or a hindrance to the diocese of Limerick”.

During his homily at 10am Mass at St Joseph’s church in Limerick city yesterday, Dr Murray said he would be guided by the priests and people of the parish, through its various representative groups and in particular the diocesan child protection committee.

Some 200 people, predominantly of an older age group, attended the Mass and applauded the bishop after his homily.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Monday, 30 November 2009

The Bishop of Limerick was under mounting pressure last night to resign over his handling of child sexual abuse complaints while he worked in Dublin.

But despite demands from abuse survivors Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has refused to call for Dr Donal Murray to quit — after damning criticisms of him in the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Archbishop Martin was, however, sharply critical of Cardinal Desmond Connell, his predecessor as Archbishop of Dublin, who he said had been “scarce with the truth” in comments about the use of Church funds to compensate victims.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By SHANE HICKEY

Monday November 30 2009

ABUSE victims said last night they were disappointed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had not made "a clear statement" on whether Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray should resign from office.

Two of the most prominent figures in the battle for justice over clerical sexual abuse yesterday called for the archbishop to clarify his views on the future of Bishop Murray.

Both Marie Collins and Andrew Madden said they were "very disappointed" that Dr Martin had not called on his colleague to resign.

IRELAND
Highland Radio

A Donegal priest has described the church as now an obstacle to faith.

Fr Edward Kilpatrick used his sermon yesterday, like most priests across the county, to respond to the publication of the Murphy Report into clerical child sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Killaloe

The bishop and priests of our diocese of Killaloe express our deep sadness and shame at the revelations contained in the Dublin Report in relation to child sexual abuse.

First and foremost we acknowledge the deep pain and suffering experienced by you who have been victims of sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse of children by any person is a heinous crime. That these crimes were committed by some of our priest colleagues is an appalling betrayal of the precious trust which has traditionally been given to us as priests. The failure of Church authorities to respond in an appropriate manner not only compounded the suffering of victims but also allowed the abuse to continue. We apologise to you for this dreadful breach of trust and any similar breaches of trust which occurred in our own diocese of Killaloe.

CLEVELAND (OH)
The Plain Dealer

By Michael O'Malley, The Plain Dealer
November 29, 2009, 5:53PM

About 100 Polish-Americans bowed their heads in somber prayer and song today in front of a chain-link fence that surrounds boarded-up St. Casimir Catholic Church on Cleveland’s East Side.

The group, protesting Bishop Richard Lennon’s closing of the ethnic church three weeks ago, decorated the fence with drapes of red and white, the Polish colors, and paintings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

For an hour, the protesters sang hymns in Polish and English, their voices wafting under sunny skies through the blighted and mostly deserted neighborhood at East 82nd Street and Sowinski Avenue. It was the largest turnout yet for what have become weekly gatherings.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX

Brad Choat Reporting
kmoxnews@kmox.com

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) -- Several dozen same-sex marriage activists held a demonstration outside the Cathedal Basilica in St. Louis, Sunday morning.

The group "Show Me No Hate" helped organize the rally.

Its founder, Ed Reggi, had a message for demonstrators and churchgoers walking by, "If you're Catholic, tell Archbishop Carlson you don't want church money to go outside your community to fund hate."

Reggi and others are objecting to Archbishop Robert Carlson sending $10,000 to Maine in an effort to have that state's same-sex marriage law shot down.

JAMAICA
Jamaica Observer

HOWARD GREGORY

Sunday, November 29, 2009

A recent lead story in one of our daily newspapers reported on a confrontation between the Roman Catholic Church and the State over matters of law, and was subtitled "Catholic priests, State clash over reporting of confessed crimes". The article quotes Monsignor Kenneth Richards, rector of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. It is suggested that the rules of the Church, known as Canon Law, do not allow for the disclosure of information shared in the confessional, even if this relates to the abuse of a child. He is further quoted as stating that the seal of the confessional stands supreme and cannot be superseded by any civil law.

While this disclosure by Monsignor Richards is bound to create a lot of stir and ruffle many feathers, based on the sensational way in which the article was written, he has certainly rendered a service to the wider society by opening up the discussion on religion, which up to this point was on a very superficial level and without any form of analysis. Certainly, there are those who, under the influence of secularism and modernity, want to advance the position that religion needs to be marginalised as a relic of superstition, ignorance, and of an age that is past, notwithstanding the fact that credible research lends no credence to such assertions. That the BBC could, in recent weeks, have had a debate as to whether the Roman Catholic Church has been a force for good in the world, and got diverse responses, is indicative, at least in part, of the negative view which some have of religion.

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

Libby Purves

I would rather not have come back to this topic. Back in May, I wrote about the Ryan report into child abuse by Irish clerics, having been shocked by an unfortunate comment from the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, about the “courage” of clergy who in “weakness” may have believed they were just “taking a bit of comfort from children”. I said that until the Catholic Church abased itself, faced reality and irrevocably altered its culture of secretive authority, it would “live with one foot in Hell”.

This admittedly melodramatic phrase brought a predictable torrent of messages from adherents, some expressing decent shame but many excoriating me for “fuelling modish anti-Catholic feeling”.

Trained up by nuns in correct examination-of-conscience procedures, I seriously asked myself whether I was indeed doing this. Like many cradle Catholics of a liberal bent I am often exasperated by the Vatican’s attitude to matters such as priestly celibacy, contraception and homosexual love: was I just picking up a handy stick to beat it with? Joining a fashionable outcry against a church whose followers do much good? Not every priest is an abuser, not every nun a harridan, not every bishop purblind or dishonest. Should we not cut Mother Church some slack?

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009

After the Ryan Report and the Ferns Report, after Goldenbridge and Letterfrack, after Sean Fortune and Ivan Payne, after all the numerous others, the report by Judge Yvonne Murphy of the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese’s responses to child sexual abuse is, perhaps, not surprising.

We have become familiar with the pattern of abuse, denial and cover-up, but this was still shocking. The complicity in criminal acts against children, from parish hall to bishop’s palace, is of an extent and an order that few suspected. Many will find it unforgivable.

If this abuse and cover-up was happening to such an extent in Dublin, there is little doubt that it was happening in dioceses across the country. Judge Murphy finds that the sexual abuse of children by clerics was widespread and that the vast majority of priests turned a blind eye to it. We have almost certainly experienced an epidemic of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By Alison O’Connor

It used to be all the rage among people of a certain age to tell the younger generation that, when they were growing up, times were so tough they had to walk to school barefoot.

‘Shoelessness’ was held up as the ultimate in deprivation, and a clear-cut example to give to a generation who, their elders believed, had no concept whatsoever of hardship. In the past ten days or so, the weather has supplied material for a whole new collection of hardship stories to be retold for decades to come.

There was so much bad news all in one go that the older generation to come is likely to be accused of gross exaggeration. But for the many people around the country whose homes and businesses have been devastated, the floods of 2009 are a horrible reality, tales of which will certainly bear re-telling to grandchildren. While all this chaos was going on, it was with a sense of growing dread that I awaited the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into how Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese had handled allegations of clerical child sex abuse, and the horrors it would contain.

IRELAND
The Post

27/11/2009

The Catholic Church’s ’don’t ask, don’t tell’ cover-up culture exposed in a damning clerical abuse report is dead and gone, a senior cleric said today.

Bishop Eamonn Walsh, deputy head of the Dublin Archdiocese, insisted clergy named and shamed in the devastating probe should not stay in their job.

A three-year inquiry found paedophile priests got away with decades of horrific child sex abuse because the Catholic hierarchy, obsessed with secrecy, was granted police immunity.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By Vincent Browne

The lies are the most striking aspect of the report on the Dublin Archdiocese - after, of course, the disclosures of the terrible abuse of probably thousands of young people over the years, and the coverup of those abuses.

Desmond Connell, an archbishop, a professor of philosophy, later a cardinal of the Church, a finger-wagging moralist; the man who spoke of his counterpart in the Church of Ireland as being intellectually inferior; the man who had a moral qualm about attending a reception hosted by Bertie Ahern and his then partner, Celia Larkin; the man who, as head of the philosophy department at UCD for years, was the Church’s man in a key post. Connell, the moralist, told the investigation commission that it was okay to lie, provided that one had a ‘‘mental reservation’’.

All right, he may not have said outright that it was okay to lie, but he did say it was okay to convey an untruth and do so deliberately.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By Kieron Wood

The former head of the Catholic Church in Ireland has said the report of the Commission of Investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese is ‘‘almost beyond belief’’.

Cardinal Cahal Daly, Archbishop of Armagh from 1990 until his retirement in October 1996, told The Sunday Business Post: ‘‘I am deeply, deeply saddened by it all. It is a very, very difficult time for the Church and it will pain a great number of people - particularly the victims, who are our first concern. But then there is the much wider hurt of Catholics who are distressed by the whole matter, which is almost beyond belief."

Daly would not discuss the issue of any bishop’s resignation, but Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told Vatican Radio that bishops would ‘‘admit their responsibilities’’.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By John Burke

The commission that investigated sex abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin is to publish a second report on clerical abuse in the capital.

A spokeswoman for the commission, which is chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, told The Sunday Business Post that it would be producing an ‘‘additional report’’.

It will be based on new information that the commission obtained after submitting its first report to the Department of Justice, and a copy was forwarded to the Garda Commissioner in July.

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By John Burke, Public Affairs Correspondent

The Commission of Investigation Report into Dublin Archdiocese - which found that members of the Catholic Church and the Garda Siochana conspired to conceal child abuse - is only the tip of the iceberg, according to victims and advocacy groups.

The report found that several gardai prevented the prosecution of at least three sex abusers as far back the 1960s.

It also found that a litany of archbishops and senior clerics concealed other vital evidence from families and investigators.

MASSACHUSETTS/IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

29 November 2009 By Kevin Cullen in Boston

For anyone from Boston, the report from the Commission of Investigation into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has a sad, sickening familiarity to it.

Only the names have changed. Actually, in a few cases, the names are the same, which is not surprising, given how many priests in Boston are of Irish descent.

The shocking portrait that emerged - of a Church and its bishops who cared more about their image and assets than they did for innocent children abused by priests - is roughly the same. The arrogance, cynicism and denial of the bishops is the same. The indifference of the Vatican is the same. The lingering, horrific impact on the shattered lives of the victims is the same.

NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

By ZACH PATBERG • STAFF WRITER • November 28, 2009

The boy was raped before he could take his weekly mikvah. Pinned from behind in the bathhouse where Orthodox Jews purify themselves with rain water, the 7-year-old never saw his attacker.

Now 29, Joseph Diangello no longer wears a yarmulke. He plays the drums and sports tattoos of heavy metal bands. He changed his name to one that sounds less Jewish. On Sept. 26, he stood in a synagogue for the first time in years, he said, before a sea of bearded men in black hats and women in customary wigs. For a brief moment, there was a sense of pride for the heritage he left behind.

"This is the first time I'm validated in the Orthodox community," he said into the microphone, according to an audio recording of the event posted on a Jewish blog site.

IRELAND
The Press Association

The head of the Catholic Church in Dublin has told bishops implicated in a sickening report into child sex abuse to look in to their consciences.

Diarmuid Martin said he had no authority to ask anyone to resign over the scandal, but revealed a bishop could be removed if criminal proceedings are brought.

IRELAND
Christian Today

by Jenna Lyle
Posted: Sunday, November 29, 2009

(PA) A Derry priest says the Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all moral authority after last week’s report revealed that senior leaders had covered up decades of child abuse.

Fr Michael Canny, spokesman for Derry Diocese said the reputation of the Church was “in tatters” and that all trust had gone.

The government-commissioned report found that the Church deliberately covered up abuse by 46 priests in order to save its own reputation. Instead of reporting the abuse, clergy suspected of abusing children were simply moved to different areas where they were then free to abuse more children.

City of Angels

Remember this date:

Ash Wednesday,
February 17, 2010

Some Canadians are organizing an international project to stop religious terrorism and bring to justice the killers of children, as part of an Day of Silence Ash Wednesday February 17, 2010.

"The only reason I'm still alive is because I know people care about what happened to me, and will stand beside me when I face the ones who tortured me," says Bingo, survivor of Catholic Indian Residential Schools, Vancouver, Canada

IRELAND
Reuters

Posted by: Mike Roddy

It was a ride and I was hitchhiking around Ireland and the driver of a tiny Morris Minor who’d stopped was a priest, so what could be wrong?

This was the 1970s when I was fresh out of an American college, bumming around Europe on almost no money. But it was the Ireland of my ancestors and they had no money either, so we were all in this together.

A little too much so, I discovered shortly after getting into the front passenger seat when the priest — and he was wearing his clerical collar, so there could be no doubt — put his hand on my knee.

UNITED STATES/IRELAND
City of Angels

It's already gone from today's US news. Not a lot of Americans likely saw the flurry of reports from Ireland around the same time as the US Thanksgiving holiday. By Sunday, the only media covering the story were in Ireland, the headlines in American media on the subject are now two days old.

The Irish justice department finally released its report on the Dublin Archdiocese, and news from Ireland filled with passionate editorials and anecdotes of sex crimes against children by priests and coverup of the crimes by Church hierarchy covering decades.

Not really even News anymore, it's the same story we've seen over and over in every archdiocese in the United States. So now we know these crimes happened internationally, what is anyone going to do about it?

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

Personal Statement of His Eminence, Desmond Cardinal Connell, Archbishop Emeritus of Dublin

The report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission, which has now been published, gives a shameful picture of the pattern of sexual abuse of children by priests in the diocese during the period of the Commission’s remit. While acknowledging the work that was done and the structures that were gradually developed to deal with this appalling problem during my tenure as Archbishop, the report is severely critical of the diocesan response, particularly in my earlier years in office.

From the time I became aware of this history, I have experienced distress and bewilderment that those placed in a position of sacred trust could be guilty of such heinous offences and cause such appalling harm to vulnerable young people. The abuse of children is an unspeakable crime. Perpetrated by priests, it becomes something even more gravely reprehensible, involving as it does so grievous a betrayal of innocence and trust. I wish to express without reservation my bitter regret that failures on my part contributed to the suffering of victims in any form.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

[Garda Vetting Policy]

[Dublin Report]

This statement is an update of the statistics published in November 2008. These statistics are compiled annually by the Archdiocese and is a record of the information available to the Archdiocese of Dublin.

This update contains information on Dublin Diocesan priests, as well as information regarding priests from Religious Congregations and other Dioceses who at some time held an appointment in Dublin, or who carried out short-term supply ministry without a formal appointment from the Diocese, and against whom allegations or suspicions have arisen even where the allegation does not refer to their time in the Diocese.

Based on the information currently available to the Diocese the following statistics have been compiled regarding the period between 1940 and 2009. During that period:

Allegations have been made against 84 priests of the Diocese.

IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

[Support Services Contacts]

[Prayer of Support]

[Safeguarding Children]

Comments of ARCHBISHOP DIARMUID MARTIN on the occasion of the publication of the Commission of Investigation in the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin

26th November 2009

It is difficult to find words to describe how I feel today. As Archbishop of a Diocese for which I have pastoral responsibility, of my own native diocese, of the diocese for which I was ordained a priest, of a Diocese which I love and hope to serve to the best of my ability, what can I say when I have to share with you the revolting story of the sexual assault and rape of so many young children and teenagers by priests of the Archdiocese or who ministered in the diocese? No words of apology will ever be sufficient.

Can I take this opportunity to thank Judge Yvonne Murphy and her team for their diligent and professional work in producing this Report, which I expect will provide an invaluable framework for how we can better protect the children of today and the future.

The Report of the Commission gives us some insight into the crimes that took place. But no report can give an indication of the suffering and trauma endured by the children, and indeed the suffering also of their family members.

SWITZERLAND
swissinfo

A Swiss bishop says that married men should also be allowed to be priests in the Catholic Church and that celibacy should be voluntary.

Norbert Brunner, who takes over as head of the Swiss Bishops Conference at the start of next year, told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper that most Swiss bishops were in favour of the move.

"There should be the possibility of making married men priests," Brunner said.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Archbishop of Dublin has called on the Irish public to support and encourage the "good priests" that are in the religious orders.

Dr Diarmuid Martin celebrated mass at St. Andrews Church on Westland Row in Dublin city, where President Mary McAleese was in attendance.

Dr Martin reflected on the Murphy Commission Report published this week, which highlighted the widespread cover-up of abuse by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese over three decades.

IRELAND
In a Godward Direction

It was a cool fall evening in the city that constantly grows in size — “because it’s always Dublin.” The light streaming from the pub windows created an island of warmth and welcome. Within, the usuals were in place. Connor the tale-teller stood leaning with his back to the bar, one arm resting on the rim, while the other held his pint aloft. A thin man in his mid-fifties, he had worn many hats in his industrious life — estate agent, salesman, amateur journalist — in all of which his ready wit and smooth tongue had served him well. As he began to speak, most eyes in the pub turned towards him.

“There was once an ancient people ruled by priests. And every year they would hold a great sacrifice out on the plain that spread before their chief city. The priests would select a calf, and slaughter it by slitting its throat, and then butcher it and roast it on a great fire. The people would then be served portions of it — a mout’ful or two at most for each of the lot of them.”

He paused to take a sip of his porter, licked his thin lips, and continued.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ÉANNA Ó CAOLLAÍ

The first victim of clerical abuse to go public has criticised the Taoiseach over the contents of a statement issued in response to the publication of the Murphy Report into clerical abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Mr Cowen yesterday issued his first statement on the matter, responding to the report which was published on Thursday.

In his statement, Mr Cowen said it was up to the religious institutions and their members to determine the "appropriateness" of any individual to hold ecclesiastical office.

IRELAND
Daily Record (Scotland)

Nov 29 2009 Bruce Walker, Sunday Mail

IRISH premier Brian Cowen told yesterday of his shock at the 30-year cover-up of child abuse by the Catholic church.

He demanded that those responsible for shielding paedophile priests be brought to justice.

Cowen said the Murphy Report into child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese was a crushing verdict that the good name and standing of the Church was placed above the basic safety of children.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

A second report on clerical abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin is to be published.

The Sunday Business Post claims new evidence, believed to relate to alleged abuse by some of the 46 priests whose cases were reviewed for the Murphy Commission report into the widespread cover-up of child abuse, will form the basis of the follow-up investigation.

It comes amid reports that the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has requested that gardaí investigate whether a clerical paedophile ring was operating in the archdiocese.

MEMPHIS (TN)
The Commercial Appeal

By Ryan Poe
Posted November 29, 2009

The music minister of a local Church of God in Christ congregation remains in his post after being charged with statutory rape involving a 16-year-old choir member.

Dwayne "DJ" Wilson, 25, who works at Greater St. Mark Church in Southwest Memphis, was arrested Nov. 17.

The denomination has had a no-tolerance policy toward sexual misconduct since 1992, and COGIC members adopted additional policies earlier this month after Atlanta pastor, blogger and former member DL Foster started reportcogicabuse.com — a Web site that lists about 30 COGIC clergy accused or convicted of sexual abuse.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ÉANNA Ó CAOLLAÍ

Senior clergy have spoken about the contents of the Murphy Report at Masses across the country.

Dr Dónal Murray, Bishop of Limerick, who criticised in the report for his handling of abuse cases while he was auxilliary bishop in Dublin, said his resignation is a question of whether his presence "is a help or a hindrance to the diocese of Limerick."

Addressing calls for his resignation, Dr Murray, who served in Dublin from 1982 to 1996, told the congregation at St Joseph's Church in Limerick today that he would "be guided by the priests and people of the diocese."

IRELAND
Irish Independent

There was Masonic-style secrecy involved in covering up the shocking abuse in this country over the years, writes Liam Collins

Sunday November 29 2009

So where were the dirty deals done? It is impossible to believe that covering up for deviant priests was organised in casual conversation between the aristocrats of the Church, the senior policemen and the civil servants who colluded in hiding the scandal of clerical sex abuse from the public.

Of course, these people were meeting on State occasions, they mixed socially and on sporting occasions. But there was nothing casual about this cover-up. This was highly organised.

It is clear from the Murphy report that the cardinals, archbishops and the top echelons of the Catholic Church had access to the best legal, medical and financial advice when it came to dealing with a tsunami of deviants and paedophiles who were using the Church as a cloak for their horrible activities.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Fr Brian D'Arcy tells Eamon Keane on Newstalk that the State must step in to protect children

Sunday November 29 2009

I must have read about a dozen reports from all over the world, from Boston right through to the Ryan report, the Ferns report, the Dublin report and reports from Australia, and they seem just the same.

Yesterday, I just felt physically sick. This morning I have to get up and I try to read it again and I still felt physically sick and I still am physically sick having read the kind of abuse that was perpetrated on innocent children by people who, in a sense were colleagues of mine, because I did spend quite a number of years working within the Dublin Archdiocese in Mount Argus.

Later in the 80s I began writing about this in the Sunday World and it was not believed, nobody believed that it was true. It began to seep through that things were happening because I knew about it from American contacts and I wrote about them and they were denied. And the way in which the institution of the Church resisted any hint of anything being less than perfect within the institution to me is horrifying and degrading, and as I read it today I cannot but agree with the man who said "There is no future for that particular church".

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Brendan O'Connor

Sunday November 29 2009

IF the Catholic Church in Ireland were any other institution it would now be outlawed, if it hadn't been already. But the Catholic Church in Ireland is not just any other institution. It occupies a special place in our hearts and in our society. Not the kind of special place it did occupy, where its members were seen by society, including the Garda, as being beyond the law, but a special place none the less.

The majority of people in this country are still Catholics. Over a certain age, the vast majority of people in this country are practising Catholics. They are heartbroken by the recent revelations about their Church and their priests and bishops, but they have chosen to stick with their Church and their God. Possibly because it is the only Church they have. The Catholic Church is their conduit to their faith and their God, a faith and a God they have invested a lifetime of spirit in, and which they are not going to turn their back on now. In short, we need a functioning Catholic Church in this country. Most of its members are innocent people who have done nothing wrong. Most of them are good Christians. We cannot take away their Church.

So what to do? Well, we need to take action now. We need to take action beyond more retrospective wailing and gnashing of teeth, more toothless truth commissions, more national days of shock as we discover the nitty-gritty of what we all half knew but didn't want to believe.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sunday November 29 2009

WHEN Archbishop Diarmuid Martin reached into the vaults of the Dublin Archdiocese to review the files on the hundreds of children abused by its priests, he was worried enough by the connections between paedophile priests that he asked gardai to investigate the possibility that a paedophile ring existed in the Church. There was no direct evidence to convince Judge Yvonne Murphy's inquiry when it reported last week. But there were enough worrying connections between some of the 46 priests investigated.

Among the many vile horrors exposed in the Murphy report, one of the most sinister was the litany of unspoken connections that existed between a handful of priests. The stories of their perversion hint at an appalling vista of paedophile clerics who hunted children in groups under the cloak of the Church, fuelling each other's aberrant desires, sharing the names of children they groomed for depraved acts, and passing their victims from one to the other.

The evil union between Fr Francis McCarthy and Fr Bill Carney began when they were seminarians at Clonliffe College. The priests, both born in 1950, were ordained in 1974. They were still students when they plotted their evil course. During their final years at Clonliffe College they stalked the residential homes where orphaned or troubled children were housed in punishment or poverty. They targeted St Joseph's in Dun Laoghaire, the Grange in south Dublin, St Vincent's in Drogheda and Lakelands in Sandymount, and abused children in each.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Gene Kerrigan

Sunday November 29 2009

When Cardinal Desmond Connell lied to RTE, he did so carefully. He used a 17th-century variation on a 13th-century philosophical technique employed by the heavies from the Catholic Church elite. This enabled him to deceive RTE and the public while keeping a clear conscience. What a clever, learned man. How adeptly he used this ancient manoeuvre to protect his standing and power.

And how recognisable the technique is, to those of us familiar with the skills of modern politicians.

The Murphy report -- mercifully -- doesn't go into the relentless detail that was appropriately used when the Ryan report described the frightful abuse heaped on children. Some detail is unavoidable, but by now we are all so sickened by this squalid affair that a simple statement that abuse took place is usually sufficient to convey the dreadfulness.

IRELAND
RTE News

Sunday, 29 November 2009
Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray has said the question of whether he should resign over his handling of allegations into clerical child abuse depends on whether his presence in the diocese is a help or a hindrance.

He told a congregation in Limerick city this morning that he would be guided on that matter by the priests and people of the diocese.

The Commission of Investigation report into clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin described Dr Murray's response to an allegation of abuse as inexcusable, and criticised his handling of other allegations.

IRELAND
BBC News

A bishop criticised in a report on the Dublin Archdiocese's handling of child abuse by priests has "serious questions to answer, a fellow bishop has said.

Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray's response to one allegation of child abuse by a priest during his time in Dublin was "inexcusable", it said.

Amid mounting calls for him to step down, he insisted he never failed to act on any allegations of child abuse.

MEXICO
Catholic News Agency

Mexico City, Mexico, Nov 28, 2009 / 10:02 pm (CNA).- Fr. Álvaro Corcuera, the Director General of the Legion of Christ, has sent a letter to members of Regnum Christi about the nature of Christ’s Kingdom and the need to show “limitless confidence in Christ.” He also asked forgiveness from those who have suffered on account of the “sorrowful circumstances” of the order. His letter, which is customary for the Feast of Christ the King, began by noting the words of the Our Father “Thy Kingdom come!”

“We pray these words because we know that the Kingdom is a gift from God rather than a goal we can reach through our own efforts,” Fr. Corcuera began.

IRELAND
The Observer (United Kingdom)

[Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI]

Henry McDonald, Ireland Editor The Observer, Sunday 29 November 2009

An influential international Catholic organisation has written to Pope Benedict XVI calling on him to remove Irish bishops named as part of the cover-up of clerical child abuse in Dublin. The Voice of the Faithful has also challenged the pope to order an Ireland-wide inquiry covering every diocese to examine further cases of priests abusing children.

In the letter, the group says "accountability cannot be achieved while so many bishops and archbishops, who have knowingly over a considerable period of time permitted this tragedy to persist, continue in office".

The group, which also has branches in North America, Australasia and Europe, asks the pope to order an island-wide inquiry into each diocese. So far the church in Ireland has resisted demands for an investigation covering all 26 Catholic dioceses.

IRELAND
The Press Association

A Catholic bishop criticised in a sickening report into clerical abuse told churchgoers his greatest regret was if his actions contributed to the suffering of a child.

Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who has rejected mounting calls for his resignation, said the priests' actions blighted lives and destroyed people's faith.

The shocking Murphy Report on child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese found the bishop had handled a number of complaints badly and described his failure to investigate one allegation as inexcusable.

IRELAND
Voice of the Faithful

[Part 1: http://votf.org/dublin/part1.pdf]

[Part 2: http://votf.org/dublin/part2.pdf]

After months of delay, the government in Ireland finally released its report on sex abuse committed by Catholic clergy during a 35-year period (Jan. 1, 1975, through April 20, 2004). The long delay came with multiple warnings that the details would be appalling. They are.

In response, Voice of the Faithful called for a worldwide investigation of Catholic bishops. "Enough is enough," President Dan Bartley said. You can read that press release here, and you can see reports from other media around the world on this page.

Voice of the Faithful's affiliate in Ireland, led by Sean O'Conaill, has been tracking this report, as well as the earlier one on sex abuse in institutions run by the Church in Ireland. To read the press release issued by VOTF-Ireland, click this link. Sean also has written an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and you will find that letter here.

Beliefnet

Rod Dreher

The Irish government commission has just released its report on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, and sadly, it's what we've come to expect. Excerpt:

Clergy were able to molest hundreds of vulnerable children because of a "systemic, calculated perversion of power" that put their abusers above the law, the Irish government said.
The damning verdict on the conduct of church and secular authorities followed a three-year investigation into allegations of child abuse by priests in Dublin going back to the 1960s. ...

That is the key point of the entire sex abuse scandal, in this country as well: the utter guilt of the bishops. The pederast priests were never more than a small minority (and, of course, this kind of cretin exists in every church); some at least (but not all) were driven by dark compulsions. This is, regrettably, part of our fallen humanity. What enraged me, and what I think is even more damnable than the crimes against children themselves, is the fact that bishops who were not driven by compulsions, and whose responsibility it was to protect the innocent from these predators, valued their own position more than the innocence of children, more than the protection of Catholic families, more than justice, and ultimately, more than Jesus Christ. And there has been, and will not be, justice coming from the Church against those men for what they did to Catholic children, Catholic families, and the Catholic faith -- all in the name of preserving their position. Cardinal Mahony is still in power in Los Angeles, for example. Cardinal Law, who was driven from office, landed in a cushy position at a Roman basilica, courtesy of Pope John Paul II. The clerical mafia, lavender and otherwise, looks out for its own, no matter what it costs to the integrity of the Catholic faith.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ÉANNA Ó CAOLLAÍ

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has said it is up to religious organisations and their members to determine the "appropriateness" of individuals to hold ecclesiastical office.

In a statement issued this afternoon after a special Cabinet meeting, Mr Cowen described the findings of the Murphy Report into abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin as "truly shocking and disturbing".

"It is a crushing verdict that the good name and standing of the Church as an institution was placed above the basic safety of children. Where this was facilitated by servants of the State, it was a betrayal of trust and a complete abandoning of duty", Mr Cowen said.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Madam, – Ultimate responsibility for corruption rests at the apex of an organisation: the Vatican and its official representation remain at present stubbornly (and suspiciously) silent on the crisis in Ireland. Perhaps the only hope for the survival of the church in Ireland is to separate from Rome and, with the help of a genuinely empowered laity, to start the long, hard road back to Christianity. – Yours, etc,

CONSTANCE MORRIS,
Eaton Wood Avenue,
Shankill, Co Dublin.

Madam, – Watching, listening, reading about this scandal proves that the current Catholic church is not in touch with the people.

Let’s send a strong message. Stop attending, stop contributing, stop assisting, stop being subservient, stop it all. The church, its clerics and its hierarchy rely on parishioners to survive. We, the people of Ireland, should indicate that we don’t approve of what has and is happening. Hit them where it hurts. Remove their reason for existing.

I suggest we treat them like we might answer one of those people in the street conducting a survey, or trying to get you to sign up to something, just say “Not today, thanks” and walk on without looking back. Liberation from the hypocrisy, lies, deceit could suit you! – Yours, etc,

JOHN McNEILLY,
Butterfield Park,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.

IRELAND
The Limerick Blogger

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny yesterday called for Bishop Donal Murray to resign.

The Irish Times quotes Kenny as saying: “This is another appalling litany of shame. Apologies here are not good enough. This is a case where men protected guilty men. This is where those in authority knew what was going on.” He insisted that people who were in positions if authority and knew what was going on should no longer continue in such positions.

Meanwhile, Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte stated that Murray should not remain a patron of any schools. In a statement on the Labour website, he declared that “whether any such Bishop should remain as a patron of a school or otherwise continue in the management or supervision of education or health provision for children is a matter for the State. Therefore where a Bishop has been directly implicated in the Murphy Report, he should have no role as a school patron.”

IRELAND
Herald

By Andrew Phelan

Saturday November 28 2009

A priest has told how a clerical abuse allegation he passed on to gardai just last year was "never acknowledged" to him by the relevant bishop.

Augustinian priest Fr Iggy O'Donovan said while the complaint was fully investigated, the bishop in question did not respond to him when he was sent a copy of his garda statement.

Drogheda-based Fr O'Donovan was recalling the case as the full truth of the cover-up of decades of child clerical abuse in the Dublin diocese was revealed in the Murphy Report.

FIJI
Sydney Morning Herald

PAUL MCGEOUGH IN SUVA
November 29, 2009

When Fiji's regime brought the Methodist Church under its thumb, a fundamentalist rival joined forces with the police.

Pastor Atu Vulaono was the cannon that backfired, revealing the Fiji regime at its tin-pot best. In a double-act with Esala Teleni, his brother-in-law and the Police Commissioner, the evangelist's ''Souls to Jesus'' crusade was given wings as a strategy to supplant the power of the Methodist Church - the denomination into which most indigenous Fijians are born.

Rolling his eyes to the heavens before fervent crowds at venues such as Suva's National Gymnasium, Vulaono might have been just any God-botherer. But funded by the Police Department and co-opted to spearhead a spiritual campaign against crime, the evangelist flew too close to the Fiji sun.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Anita Guidera

Saturday November 28 2009

A RETIRED garda, who investigated one of the country's most notorious paedophile priests, yesterday called for a commission of investigation into the Raphoe Diocese to be established as a matter of urgency.

Martin Ridge said a commission would finally uncover the extent of the damage perpetrated by former priest, Eugene Greene, who was moved between eight different parishes over a 30-year period before finally being convicted in 2000.

He was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to 41 sample charges against 26 victims, some as young as seven and many of whom were altar boys.

WILMINGTON (DE)
The News Journal

The Associated Press is asking a bankruptcy judge to unseal a settlement agreement between the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and a former student at Salesianum School who alleged he was molested by a priest at the school in 1962.

The news service filed a motion Tuesday asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher S. Sontchi to allow the news organization to view the settlement because bankruptcy rules "permit any interested entity to intervene generally or with respect to any specified matter."

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Taoiseach Brian Cowen has released a statement on the Murphy Commission report, describing it as "truly shocking and disturbing".

Brian Cowen said the report into the abuse and cover-up of abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese over a 30-year period is "a crushing verdict that the good name and standing of the Church as an institution was placed above the basic safety of children".

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Michael Brennan, Aine Kerr and Aidan O'Connor

Saturday November 28 2009

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen yesterday avoided commenting publicly on the devastating findings of the probe into child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Mr Cowen did not comment publicly on the Commission of Investigation report during his early morning tour of the flooded estates of Athlone on Thursday because it was not published until the afternoon. But he declined to speak to the waiting media while both entering and exiting Intel's factory in Kildare yesterday to attend its 20th anniversary celebrations.

IRELAND
The Independent (United Kingdom)

"Haven't you," said a man who had just taken my heart and snapped it in two, "ever heard of forgiveness?" I was so shocked, I couldn't speak. What I wanted to say, what I would have said, had I been capable of emitting something other than weird mewling noises, which I wasn't, was that that isn't quite how it works.

Forgiveness, I wanted to say, isn't something you order, like a double macchiato and a chocolate muffin. You don't bark your request and get your instant get-out-of-jail free card, your "no worries, mate" or, if you're English, and not 15, or not pretending to be 15, your "please don't worry about it, it's all absolutely fine". Fine for you, maybe, with your slate-wiped-free clear conscience and your great-I-can-do-it-again spring in your step. But for me? I don't think so. And doesn't it, by the way, involve something called remorse?

I thought, with a little flash of pain and humiliation, of that conversation this week. I thought of it in relation to the Irish Catholic church which has, for decades (for centuries, actually) been committing crimes a bit more serious than being carelessly romantic. From 1975 to 2004, according to a report from the Irish justice minister, senior figures in the Catholic church, and in the police force, colluded in the sexual abuse of hundreds of children.

MISSOURI
The Examiner

By Michael Glover - michael.glover@examiner.net
The Examiner
Posted Nov 28, 2009

Independence, MO — .The mother of victims from the Mohler family sex crimes told her church leader rather than police about alleged incestuous rapes that happened in the 1980s and 1990s, according to court documents.

A search warrant and affidavit claimed that the mother of the victims was made aware of the alleged offenses, but that she did not notify authorities at the time.

“At the time, complaints by the mother were taken to the head of the church rather than law enforcement,” the documents said. “No official investigation was completed at the time.”

CALIFORNIA
Orland Press Register

Friday, Nov 27 2009

By Rob Parsons/Tri-County Newspapers
The Willows pastor charged with sexually assaulting two teenagers from his congregation posted a $100,000 bail bond Thursday night and was released from the Glenn County Jail, the sheriff's office said.

The Rev. Carlton Hammonds, 56, of the Willows Baptist Church on Tehama Street, pleaded not guilty Monday in Glenn County Superior Court to three felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a teenage girl and a felony charge of sexual battery against another minor.

Hammonds posted bail just before 10:30 p.m., nearly a week after he was arrested by sheriff's deputies outside the church, Sgt. Jim Miranda said.

IRELAND
UTV

Saturday, 28 November 2009

It is not the memories of the kickings and lashings with a leather strap that make Tom Hayes pause and choke and break down. Nor is it the incessant bullying, the slave labour or the sexual abuse he suffered after dark in the dormitory. The memory that turns the 63-year-old former soldier's voice small with terror is one vivid image from his eight years in Glin industrial school, Limerick. "The first time I saw someone brought back to the school having absconded was one of the most frightening things I've ever witnessed," he says. "His head was shaved as punishment and then he took a really serious beating by two Christian Brothers. I've never forgotten it."

The trauma for Hayes and others has been stirred up again this week by the fourth major report in the past decade investigating the abuse of children by Ireland's Catholic clergy and teachers. A day before the government report made new revelations of the collusion of the Irish police and archbishops in covering up decades of sexual and physical torture, the Christian Brothers, the Catholic lay order at the heart of some of the most disturbing abuses, offered reparations of £145m in cash and land, to be handed over to independent trusts.

The revelations have all but destroyed a dying institution, in Ireland at least, where there are barely 250 Brothers left with an average age of 74. Last year they ceded control of 96 schools to a charitable trust, marking the end of two centuries of the Brothers educating boys in Ireland. The order may be diminished but its legacy still looms large over thousands of lives – and the development of Ireland. As Jim Beresford, who was confined to Dublin's notorious Artane school as a boy, puts it: "Ireland made the Christian Brothers and then they made Ireland."

IRELAND
The Irish Times

BREDA O'BRIEN

How could twisted accounts of truth be let obscure the protection of children from abuse?

AFTER ARCHBISHOP Martin’s press conference following the release of the Dublin diocesan report on Thursday, I commented to a senior journalist that the whole saga was utterly depressing. To my amazement, he said that, on the contrary, it was a tribute to the courage of so many people who doggedly kept on refusing to be put down and silenced.

And he is right. Andrew Madden, Ken Reilly, Marie Collins and so many others who were violated, worked tirelessly for justice. And then there are people like the young garda, Finbar Garland, who had less than one year’s experience when he was told of altar boys being abused. In 1983, on advice from a sergeant, he conducted extensive interviews before the other young people involved could be “got at” or silenced. He could recognise evil and react appropriately.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

LORNA SIGGINS Western Correspondent

REACTION: SENATOR IVANA Bacik has condemned as “an appalling cover-up” the catalogue of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin and has criticised the Garda for failing to respond to complaints.

Any bishops still in office who were named as having handled child sexual abuse complaints badly should resign as a matter of conscience, said Senator Bacik yesterday at a conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the Galway Rape Crisis Centre.

She also called for a review of the “significant role played by the Catholic Church in the education and health sectors”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

DEAGLÁN de BRÉADÚN Political Correspondent

LEGISLATION: WORK WAS “well under way” on preparing legislation to provide a statutory framework for the sharing of “soft information” on potential child abusers, Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews said in response to the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

It was “critical” that statutory and non-statutory bodies be able to report such data to the Health Service Executive and the Garda Síochána, he said yesterday.

“I will take full account . . . of the findings by the commission of investigation in relation to the collection and sharing of information.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Saturday November 28 2009

Pope Benedict XVI has stayed silent over the devastating Dublin diocese abuse report more than 24 hours after publication of its sordid revelations that have shocked Mass-going Catholics and couples with young families.

On Thursday, hours after the release of the chilling report, the Vatican chief spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, said issues such as abuse scandals were handled by the local Church rather than by the Holy See.

But last night the Pope's representative in Ireland gave an assurance to the Irish public that Pope Benedict was committed to rooting paedophile priests from the ranks of the Irish clergy.

CANADA
The Telegram

BY STEVE BARTLETT
The Telegram

A Toronto Star story on the 2004 federal election suggested if there was a man in Newfoundland who could be called a saint, it was Father Des McGrath.

Paul Vivian read the article and became physically ill.

“I just projectile vomited across the table,” recalls the Corner Brook native, who was living in Toronto at the time.

“My partner, who knew what I was going through, looked at the article and said, ‘Paul, you have to do something about this. You have to confront this. You’ve been receiving psychiatric care for years. You’re still waking up screaming in the middle of the night. If you don’t confront this man, it will ruin the rest of your life.’ ”

IRELAND
Zenit

DUBLIN, Ireland, NOV. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In response to the publication of a report about sexual abuse of children by clergy, the archbishop of Dublin is stating that "no apology is sufficient."

The report, which details abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese from 1975 to 2004 and the response of Church and state authorities to these accusations, was published Thursday by the Commission of Investigation.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

KATHRYN HAYES

THE BISHOP OF LIMERICK: THE BISHOP of Limerick Donal Murray was last night standing over his position not to resign despite calls on him to do so following the revelations about senior church figures in the Dublin diocesan report.

The report noted the commission which compiled the Dublin diocesan report said Bishop Murray did not deal properly with the suspicions that that were expressed to him in relation to Fr Tom Naughton in the early 1980s.

When some time later evidence of Fr Naughton’s behaviour emerged in another parish, Bishop Murray’s failure to reinvestigate the earlier suspicions was “inexcusable” according to the report.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FR EDMONDUS (pseudonym) : “He abused his power and used my respect for his religious position to abuse and degrade me – a child – not just a child but a sick child. How much lower than that can you sink? A man like that deserves our prayers but not our protection.” – Marie Collins

FR DONAL GALLAGHER: “One complainant told the commission that Fr Gallagher would abuse her in confession by putting his hand down her trousers. She was nine years old at the time.

“He would have an altar bowl and a napkin at one side. When he had finished abusing her he would wash his hands in the altar bowl and dry them with the napkin.”

FR X: “Fr X had visited her home on a number of occasions. The last time he was in her home a female helper employed in the house entered her six-year-old son’s bedroom and found Fr X lying on the child, who was naked on his bed.

“Fr X tried to pass it off as a game. It was reported that the little boy later remarked that Fr X was choking him and that he thought priests were holy.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FINTAN O'TOOLE

OPINION: The Roman Catholic Church’s great achievement in Ireland has been to so disable our capacity to think about right and wrong that parents of abused children apologised for the abusing priest

IN HIS pastoral letter of February 1979, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Ryan drew attention to the “corruption of the young”. And he was quite specific about the forces that were responsible for it. He attacked “the modern era of enlightenment and permissiveness”, and stated that “the new frankness and openness in regard to sexual matters had not made people more healthy in mind and body, but less healthy”.

The corollary of Archbishop Ryan’s complaint was, of course, that a lack of frankness and openness in sexual matters would make for a healthier society, and would protect the young from corruption. Like the three other holders of the office scrutinised in the Murphy report, Ryan certainly practised the first part of what he preached. He was a great enemy of openness and frankness, and a great practitioner of the arts of evasion and cover-up. It was the second part of the formula – the protection of the young – that gave him trouble.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JAMIE SMYTH

Helpline counsellors were up to 10 times busier than usual yesterday in the wake of the report’s publication

GUILT, ANGER, frustration, mistrust and desperation were just a few of the emotions that helpline counsellors encountered as they responded to a flood of calls from victims of sex abuse.

At the One in Four victim support group office in Dublin, receptionist Caitríona Behan said the charity had handled about 200 calls on its helpline following publication of the commission’s report. “Many of the people calling are really angry and asking how this could have happened. Some want revenge, others want counselling, but most want to tell their stories, often for the first time,” she said.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

HARRY McGEE and DEAGLÁN de BRÉADÚN

POLITICAL REACTION: FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has said that all bishops implicated in the Dublin diocesan report should resign immediately.

Mr Kenny said those who were in positions of authority in Dublin archdiocese, and knew what was going on, should no longer continue in such positions. “This is another appalling litany of shame. Apologies here are not good enough,” he said.

“This is a case where men protected guilty men. This is where those people in authority and leadership knew what was going on,” Mr Kenny added.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FIONA GARTLAND

People attending Mass yesterday expressed fury at the commission’s findings

PRAYERS WERE said for the victims of child sexual abuse at the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin yesterday.

Priests asked Mass-goers to pray for God’s blessing for all those who were hurt by priests of the diocese and especially those whose wounds were re-opened by the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Archdiocese of Dublin. A large congregation attended lunchtime Mass at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street, one of a number of services at which prayers for victims were said.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GEORGE JACKSON

PRIEST'S VIEW: A PROMINENT priest in the diocese of Derry has said the Catholic Church in Ireland no longer had any standing, credibility or moral authority following the disclosures in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Fr Michael Canny, spokesman for the Derry Diocese, said he would probably spend the rest of his life as a priest trying to rebuild trust and confidence in the Catholic Church as a result of the inquiry’s finding that the church routinely covered up clerical sex abuse of children.

Describing the abuse as depraved and incomprehensible, he said the reputation of the Catholic Church was “in tatters”, and said people were rightly angry.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

STEVEN CARROLL

GARDA RESPONSE: GARDA COMMISSIONER Fachtna Murphy has ordered a senior member of the force to begin an investigation into the findings of the Dublin diocesan report.

Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahoney is to examine how officials from church and State authorities, including the gardaí, handled complaints of child sex abuse against members of the clergy.

Mr O’Mahoney, who was recently appointed Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for the western region, has been instructed to carry out the investigation as he deems appropriate and would be entitled to interview those criticised in the report.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN Chief Reporter

Of the 46 priests investigated, some remain within their orders under strict conditions, some have left Ireland and others have disappeared

OF THE 46 priests investigated by the commission, some are awaiting trial, others are members of the laity and at least one has absconded. The commissions report shows that:

Fourteen are dead; Twenty of the priests are out of ministry; 11 of these are financially supported by the archdiocese and living under restrictions; Nine are laicised; Four are living within their religious orders under restrictions; Two are living within their orders without restrictions; One priest belongs to a UK diocese and his whereabouts are unknown.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conor Ryan, Cormac O’Keeffe and Stephen Rogers

Saturday, November 28, 2009

GARDAÍ and clergy who helped protect paedophile priests in the diocese of Dublin are to be targeted in a top-level criminal investigation.

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has tasked Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahony to examine the shocking report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin and recommend where criminal charges can be pursued.

Comm Murphy said this would look specifically at how Church and state authorities handled reports of child abuse and see if their "failings amounted to criminal behaviour".

CHILE
Latin American Herald Tribune

SANTIAGO – Four people were formally charged Friday in a Chilean court for their alleged participation in a pederasty ring that abused at-risk youths, judicial sources said.

Those in custody – two college students, a telecommunications engineer and a lawyer – were part of a group that under the name of boylover.net coordinated pederastic activities. ...

Meanwhile a Filipino priest was ordered held without bail after being arraigned for the crime of sexually abusing a minor at a private high school in a wealthy Santiago neighborhood.

The court considered that releasing the accused would endanger the safety of the child, the only victim identified up to now.

IRELAND
The Western Star (Canada)

RUSSELL WANGERSKY
The Western Star

First off, I hold no brief for any particular religion. I’ve attended Anglican services, United Church services, and even some Catholic services.

My religion is pretty much my own — but if you must know, it has a lot more to do with a belief in some great natural order. Perhaps it’s the kind of thing that anyone who lives outside organized religion eventually comes up with — the idea that some many things tie so carefully together, and that there is so much wonder in the world, that it is hard to believe that there is not an overriding order to all things. ...

This is a column about institutional failings, and, in fact, institutional failings on a huge scale.

Thursday, the Irish government released a report they’ve had since July, a report into the behaviour of police and of Catholic archbishops and how complaints of child sexual abuse — on a staggering scale — were covered up.

The language may be familiar to those who remember scandals involving the clergy here.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel Kennedy

Saturday November 28 2009

A NUMBER of auxiliary bishops in the Dublin Archdiocese were made aware of complaints of child sexual abuse by priests.

However, of the 13 auxiliary bishops named in the Murphy report, a number were found to have handled the complaints "particularly badly".

In some cases it was found that they appointed priests to particular parishes but did make any reference to child sexual abuse issues.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Diarmaid Ferriter

Saturday November 28 2009

In March 1970, Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid wrote to his press secretary Ossie Dowling, explaining that he did not want to co-operate with those seeking to question him about the Catholic Church's attitude to sexuality: "I am very tired of RTE's attention to bishops and priests. I do not understand why they do not pay attention to the Army, the law, medicine and especially journalism; fruitful fields for investigators. They are not anxious to promote the Kingdom of God."

As a result of the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, the Catholic Church authorities were encouraged to engage more with their flocks through such initiatives as diocesan press offices. McQuaid swallowed this pill by allowing such an office to be set up in Dublin, but he was adamant that he would not be personally interviewed, and would not debate or discuss the Church's stance on issues of sexual morality.

One of McQuaid's successors, Archbishop Kevin MacNamara, gave his first major print interview in 1986 and complained that the bishop's statements on issues other than sexuality were ignored. His successor, Archbishop Desmond Connell, was similarly distrustful of the media, and avoided engagement with the crisis in the diocese and in the Catholic Church generally over the issue of child sexual abuse. Connell was old school, seemingly aloof and uncomfortable in a secular setting.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By BRUCE ARNOLD

Saturday November 28 2009

The main axis of public concern is missing from the report of the Murphy Commission. This is the tie-up between Church abnegation of responsibility for abuse in the Dublin diocese and the State's awareness and response to this.

The State at the highest level, meaning government and ministerial involvement as well as that of the Dail and Seanad, is simply not in the report. Generous investigation and coverage is given to the legal provisions that were in existence and were so callously and dishonestly ignored by the Church.

And this led to serious and endemic criminal acts of which clerics from the hierarchy down were guilty. But there is no such attention given to the State's equally reprehensible collusion in this.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel Kennedy

Saturday November 28 2009

A CHANCELLOR in Dublin archdiocese who dealt with many of the complaints of clerical sex abuse failed to tell abuse victims about other complaints against their abuser.

The report found that although Monsignor Alex Stenson -- who was the right-hand man of the then archbishop, Desmond Connell, in the 1990s -- carried out the investigation of complaints "superbly", he was "less successful" in dealing with complainants.

He also told gardai he would not have written a letter to a victim about her abuser priest if he had known she would give it to the authorities.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Saturday November 28 2009

THIS week's flooding across the country offers a devastatingly apt image of the choppy waters washing away the cover-ups of previously unassailable rulers of Catholic Dublin.

The shattering report headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy has severely torpedoed the moral hull of the Barque of St Patrick and undermined the authority of its silken-frocked skippers.

The report's findings of six decades of sordid underground clerical child sex abuse that was known but covered up by four successive archbishops of Dublin until 1995, now threatens to sink the moral credibility of the episcopal crew.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By PATRICIA CASEY

Saturday November 28 2009

The theories that explain paedophilia do not provide any optimism that it can be prevented

The unfolding of the terrible horror of child sexual abuse by clerics in Ireland that has emerged over the past decade raises huge questions.

Since the publication of the Murphy report on Thursday, the focus has been on the collusion by Church and State to conceal this truth and protect the guilty.

WILMINGTON (DE)
Pocono Record

By RANDALL CHASE
Associated Press Writer
November 28, 2009 WILMINGTON, Del. — The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is obligated to pay retirement benefits to six priests who are confirmed pedophiles, church officials argued in a bankruptcy court filing seeking permission to keep making the payments.

After filing for Chapter 11 protection, the diocese agreed not to make payments to priests accused of sexual abuse without court approval. That agreement was made after objections were raised by attorneys for alleged abuse victims who now sit on a creditors committee.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Andrew Madden

Saturday November 28 2009

I was a little emotional on 'Prime Time' on Thursday night. No one was more surprised than I was; I'm more used to being composed and articulate.

But even though I had anticipated the essence of the Murphy report, I will never get used to reading about priests (or any adults) "swimming nude with young boys in a swimming pool in the back garden", "photographing children in sexual postures alone and in groups", "liking physical intimacy with children", "knocking a boy unconscious", "kissing young girls in confession" or "putting a hand down the trousers of a nine-year-old girl".

To read chapter after chapter of this disgusting behaviour is deeply upsetting for anyone with any regard for the safety and welfare of a beautiful child, as all children are. As if this wasn't upsetting enough, we then read about what action was taken when bishops and priests were notified of the above abusive behaviour.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Saturday November 28 2009

A priest engaged in a 15-minute hug with a young adult that scandalised vulnerable youngsters with mental disabilities during the Dublin diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes.

The "inappropriate behaviour" of Fr Magnus, a pseudonym for the cleric, who also was seen chatting up another young adult in a Lourdes bar, was investigated by the Murphy commission.

The report concluded that Fr Magnus's hug was witnessed by other priests who were shocked, and were fearful of its impact on emotionally vulnerable pilgrims.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Tom Brady, Edel Kennedy and John Cooney
Saturday, 28 November 2009

Eighty files are to be sent to the Republic's Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) by a garda team investigating fresh complaints of clerical child abuse.

The complaints were made after publication in May of the Ryan report, which detailed horrific physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by members of religious orders.

The revelation comes as gardai turn their attention to investigating priests in the Dublin Archdiocese who are the subject of the Murphy report, which was published this week.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Irish paedophile priest Ivan Payne was paid money from a fund meant to help the poor of Dublin after his release from prison and continues to receive money designed for "charitable purposes".

From the time of his laicisation in 2002 for a period of five years, Payne was supported with money from the Poor of Dublin Fund. The fund is made up of bequests to the archdiocese and is meant to be used for the relief of the poor.

However, the Murphy report into clerical child sex abuse found that the archdiocese decided that, because of his low employment prospects following his release from prison and his risk of becoming destitute, he should be financially supported at least until he qualified for the state pension this year.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Lesley-Anne Henry
Saturday, 28 November 2009

Two Catholic priests in the Diocese of Down and Connor are currently under investigation for child abuse.

Father Paul Symonds, a curate in the parish of Kirkinriola in Ballymena, and a priest from Bangor have been suspended while the PSNI probe the allegations.

The development follows the publication of the Murphy report in Dublin this week which found that hundreds of cases of abuse were covered up by the archdiocese and other Church and state authorities in the Republic.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

The Catholic Church is continuing to support priests accused of child sexual abuse -- including five who were convicted.

Of the 46 priests in the damning Dublin Archdiocesan report, 15 are receiving financial support either directly or indirectly from the diocese.

However, the Church has also employed an ex-garda detective to work as a liaison officer with the priests and monitor their behaviour.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY and HARRY McGEE

Pressure on the five bishops who still hold office and whose handling of clerical child sex abuse was addressed by the Dublin diocesan report increased throughout yesterday.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said all bishops implicated in the report should resign immediately. He said those who were in positions of authority in Dublin archdiocese, and who knew what was going on, should no longer continue in such positions.

“This is another appalling litany of shame. Apologies here are not good enough,” he said.

IRELAND
Guardian

Austen Ivereigh guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 November 2009

Thursday's report into the appalling cover-up by the church and public officials of abuse by Catholic priests in the archdiocese of Dublin is as detailed, and unsparing, as the previous one in May into physical brutality in Ireland's church-run reform schools. Almost no one emerges unscathed. Abusive priests were shuffled around by bishops; the police force and judges looked the other way, or left it to the bishops; canon lawyers ignored canon law. Children were silenced, and sacrificed on the altars of respectability. The levels of arrogance and denial are bewildering. The purgation is massive. Just as the church begins Advent, Ireland is plunged into Lent.

The charge laid at the church's door is simple and devastating. From the 1960s through to the 1990s, none of the four archbishops of Dublin reported the abuse that was brought to their attention: as the report says, "The Dublin archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state."

IRELAND
Spectator

Alex MassieFriday, 27th November 2009
The least surprising thing about the latest revelations of the Irish Catholic Church's complicity in thousands of cases of horrific child abuse is that almost none of it is surprising at all. Shocking, yes, but not surprising. Even those of us with an appropriately cynical view of the Chuch, mind you, can only marvel at the breathtaking mendacity displayed by the Church.

The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, says he is " mindful of the perceived hollowness of repeated apologies" and he has a point. Because until they were caught, the Church displayed no remorse whatsoever. Time and time again, as the Murphy Commission's report makes only too clear, the clerical authorities, often with the full connivance of the Gardai, lied and lied again as they protected child abusers an endangered and exploited the children in their care.

And the cover-up continued into this decade too. This was not merely a case of ancient history. Consider this all-too typical brand of mendacity that would, in other circumstances, be entertaining:

Nothing quite as perfectly illustrates the moral rot at the core of institutional Catholicism in Ireland as the concept of “mental reservation”.

IRELAND
America Magazine

Posted at: 2009-11-27 16:28:18.0
Author: Austen Ivereigh

Paragraph 1.15 of the devastating Murphy Commission's report into the cover-up of clerical sex abuse of minors by bishops says it all:

The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.

Thursday's 720-page report asked why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics, did not inform public authorities about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995. Yet from the early 1970s until that time, four archbishops compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. Not one of them was prosecuted under canon or civil law.

IRELAND
Voice from the Desert

In light of the release of the “Murphy Report” on child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin, Ireland, Road to Recovery, Inc., a New Jersey-based non-profit organization that assists clergy abuse survivors with their recoveries from abuse, calls on all Catholics to withhold contributions from their Church until Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Church authorities who covered-up and enabled the serial abuse of children worldwide RESIGN, ARE REMOVED, ARE INDICTED, AND/OR ARE IMPRISONED.

IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

by Tom Roberts on Nov. 27, 2009 NCR Today

For months, Catholics in Ireland's Archdiocese of Dublin have been bracing themselves for release of a government report on decades of sexual abuse of children by priests and cover up of the abuse by the hierarchy.

Catholics in the United States will find much familiar about the reports of abuse -- the patterns of grooming, of brutality, of cover up and of payoff. Strikingly different, however, from what we've become accustomed to hearing from members of the hierarchy in the United States has been the reaction of the current cardinal archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. Read the full text of his statement here.

In part, he said:

"The sexual abuse of a child is and always was a crime in civil law; it is and always was a crime canon law; it is and always was grievously sinful.

IRELAND
Labour

Statement by Joe Costello TD
Spokesperson on Europe and Human Rights

.Speaking at the AGM of the Labour Party in Dublin Central on Friday 27th November, Deputy Joe Costello said that the findings of the Murphy Report into child abuse by priests of the Archdiocese of Dublin were absolutely shocking.

“Many of the abusing priests worked in parishes in my constituency of Dublin Central. Many of the children who were abused were local innocent boys and girls who were sexually assaulted, had their childhoods traumatised and their adult lives permanently damaged.

IRELAND
Baptist Planet

Victims of priestly pedophilia have responded to revelations of a decades-long cover-up in the Dublin Archdiocese with a call for expansion of the investigation to every diocese in Ireland.

Tragically predictable, the Irish Catholic Church pooh pooed the victims. Auxiliary Bishop Eamon Walsh of Dublin huffed to Ireland On-Line that further investigation would be a bootless distraction from “consolidating our services.”

It sounds like a habitual reaction — even one that is intended to mislead. Over a span of three decades, four successive archbishops of Dublin responded to clerical child sexual abuse in their diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up.” Similarly, the Vatican refused to cooperate with the Murphy Commission investigation of a sample of 46 Dublin Archdiocese priests out of 102 against whom complaints has been made between 1975 and 2004.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JOANNA ROBERTS

A retired garda from Valleymount, Co Wicklow has spoken out about the threats he received after attempting to investigate reports of child abuse by the local curate in the early 1980s.

Detective sergeant John Brennan received abusive letters, sometimes containing human excrement, after reporting suspicious behaviour by Fr Thomas Naughton to the Valleymount parish priest.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, Det Sgt Brennan said he told the parish priest about the curate, but was initially met with a light-hearted response. “A big ha ha laugh was my first reaction from him,” said Det Sgt Brennan. “He said, ‘Is he a homo or something?’”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GORDON DEEGAN

The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh and the priests of the diocese are will make a joint statement on Sunday in response to the findings of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

The statement was being distributed to priests in the diocese today after a consultation between Dr Walsh and the priests on the statement’s content.

A spokeswoman for Dr Walsh said he would not be commenting on the report until after the statement has been read out at all masses on Sunday.

NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

[with video]

The Bishop of Down and Connor has said the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland would co-operate fully with any investigation into allegations of child abuse involving members of the clergy.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JOANNA ROBERTS

One of the founders of Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) today called for Pope Benedict to visit Ireland and apologise personally for abuse carried out by members of the Catholic Church.

"The Pope should come here and make an apology to the victims and the Irish nation, and he should be contrite and sincere," John Kelly told The Irish Times.

The pontiff is the only one who can apologise for “the ignoble way the princes of the Church have behaved of over the last fifty year," he said. “We need to reform the Irish Church root and branch because they don’t know how to handle abuse. People believed they were above the law.”

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Bishop of Raphoe has said he would welcome an audit or any intervention which would help ensure the safety of children.

Dr Philip Boyce was speaking as it emerged that one of the priests identified as a serial abuser in the Murphy Report served for a period in the Diocese of Raphoe.

IRELAND
AFP

By Andrew Bushe (AFP)

DUBLIN — Investigations into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland should be extended nationwide, a leading campaigner said Friday a day after a damning study condemned a decades-long cover-up.

The call came as one Irish newspaper branded the abuse of children in the care of the Catholic Church, which was covered up for more than 30 years by senior clergy, as "satanic," and "rampant evil."

"We are looking at this commission's report as the end of its work," said Marie Collins, a campaigner and survivor of abuse by a priest named as Father Edmondus in the report.

IRELAND
Herald

By Andrew Lynch

Friday November 27 2009

"It was just a few bad apples." That's been the standard excuse trotted out by the Catholic Church and its cheerleaders ever since the first evidence of clerical sex abuse started to emerge in the mid-90s.

The Murphy Report has now exploded that myth once and for all -- and no matter how painful it might be, it's time to face up to the truth of what that says about us as a country.

The Murphy Report is three volumes long, contains 750 pages and can be summed up in a single sentence. Rotten to the core.

IRELAND
Herald

By Terry Prone

Friday November 27 2009

The ones who are still alive apologised, yesterday. From their posts outside Dublin or from retirement, they apologised. And those apologies from former Dublin Archbishops were instantly dismissed by victim groups.

Part of the problem is the wording. It's remote-control remorse. They express "regret" over "any pain or hurt caused".

They don't take ownership the way that smart man Diarmuid Martin takes ownership. They don't say "I'm sorry. Personally. I'm ashamed. And I know I should be ashamed."

IRELAND
Herald

Friday November 27 2009

One of the most disturbing aspects of the report into the cover-up of clerical abuse was that the Catholic Church had help in its shameful course of action.

We thought we'd become almost unshockable when it came to hearing about the crimes perpetrated by members of the clergy. But the Murphy report's forensic account of how the Garda Siochana was culpable in the cover-up is chilling.

It also makes the bravery of those few good men and women who went against the tide in their fight for justice even more remarkable.

IRELAND
Herald

Friday November 27 2009

What hope was there for the child victims of rogue priests when even the Gardai would not do their duty?

That is the question that must stand out for many of us as we read the findings of the Murphy Report.

The Church's practice of keeping complaints of abuse within its own walls was a major facilitator of the exploitation of children.

But the reluctance of Gardai to deal with complaints of abuse by priests practically guaranteed these priests a free run.

IRELAND
Herald

By Padraig O Morain

Friday November 27 2009

Ban sex to anyone who recalls the Catholic Church in its heyday, the hypocrisy laid bare by the Murphy Report is breathtaking.

Irish children lived in two worlds. In one they were protected. In the other they were abused.

In one world, the Church's concern for sexual morality was extreme.

When two boys in my class were found reading the News of the World, seen by the Christian Brothers as a dangerously immoral influence, we were all required to write an essay on 'chastity' that night to cleanse ourselves.

IRELAND
Herald

By Sinead Ryan

Friday November 27 2009

Here's a question which is awful, but think about it anyway: what would you do if your eight-year-old came home from school today full of news that he had been practising for his first Holy Communion?

What though, if the news was that the priest had given him an important job of filling the holy water font in the sacristy, and gone in to show him how, but something funny happened. The priest began touching him. He knows 'good' touching from 'bad' because teacher has explained it. This was definitely bad. It was in his pants and the priest's hand was big and rough and made him cry.

Would you die of shock? Call the principal? The bishop? The gardai? Get on the internet? Text your husband to come home immediately and tell every mother in the class? What organisations would you call?

IRELAND
Herald

By David Sharrock

Friday November 27 2009

Andrew Madden was proud to have been selected as Father Ivan Payne's gardener. The 12-year-old altar boy from Dublin, who had ambitions to become a priest himself, felt blessed.

Yet on the very first day of his new duties, he was invited inside the parochial house to watch television, where Father Payne sat next to him on the sofa, put his arm around him -- then put his hand on the boy's crotch.

Brought up in this Catholic country and taught to respect and obey the priesthood, the young Andrew was too frightened to stop the abuse.

IRELAND
Herald

By David McKittrick

Friday November 27 2009

A seemingly unending wave of sex scandals, many of them involving children, has decimated the once-proud standing of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

This has rendered its power a pale shadow of what it was.

The church was almost bound to lose influence over the last half-century, in common with a Western world where the secular is generally prevailing against the religious.

But in Ireland, its fall from grace has been dramatic.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Pressure was mounting tonight for the resignation of senior clerics who shielded paedophile priests to protect the reputation of the Catholic Church.

Politicians and churchmen said clergy named and shamed in a sickening report on child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese should be removed from their positions.

The inquiry revealed three decades of horrific abuse was hidden because the Catholic hierarchy, obsessed with secrecy, was granted Garda immunity.

IRELAND
The Daily Dish

A formal investigation of Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese concludes that there is “no doubt” that child sexual abuse was covered up by Church authorities over four decades. Patsy McGarry has more:

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying. According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”. ...

If the Catholic church were a secular institution in Ireland and had been found guilty of child abuse to the massive extent the Church has, it would be forced to close. Its top officials would not be issuing statements of apology and regret, but serving sentences in jail. The name of John Paul II would not be a revered mantra; it would be synonymous with the head of an international organization that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge its own long-running, institutional brutalization of generations of defenseless children.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The Garda Commissioner has ordered a full investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of child sex abuse allegations folowing yesterday's report on the Archdiocese of Dublin.

The Commission of Investigation report concluded that there is “no doubt” that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the archdiocese and other Church authorities.

It also found that “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”.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has ordered an examination into the findings of the Murphy report on clerical sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

The report published yesterday found widespread evidence of a cover-up by the Catholic Church, the State and Gardai.

SANTA BARBARA (CA)
City of Angels

Money is available for pedophile priest crime victims who need therapy, through Therapy Trust for Victims in Santa Barbara.

Ray Higgins called from Santa Barbara to say, "We have right now enough money in Therapy Trust for Victims' fund for nine or ten more persons to get therapy, so we're getting the word out nationally."

Priest sex crime victims in Santa Barbara pooled funds after receiving settlements in 2006 and created a trust to help other pedophile priest sex crime victims get therapy. Currently because of sound money management, the fund has money available for about nine more people to get an estimated two years of therapy. Contact Ray Higgins at: Therapy Trust for Victims of Clergy Sex Abuse therapytrust@cox.net for an application.

IRELAND
Irish Health

[Posted: Fri 27/11/2009 by Niall Hunter, Editor]

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till,

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone?

For men were born to pray and save

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone…

(September 1913 - William Butler Yeats)

We have again been forced to come to terms with yet another depressing delineation of our shameful dysfunctionality as a State and a society since our glorious independence 87 years ago.

One of the conclusions of Judge Yvonne Murphy’s damning report could easily be applied to many of the other scandals that have emerged in Irish life in recent decades.

The Dublin Archdiocese, we are told, in neglecting to do anything effective about, and it could be argued, practically encouraging clerical sex abuse, was preoccupied with: “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets.”

IRELAND
Voice from the Desert

Road to Recovery, Inc., a New Jersey-based international organization whose mission is to provide compassionate counseling to victims of sexual abuse by clergy and others, lauds the report from the Irish government about the soul murder of thousands of children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults by clergy persons in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Road to Recovery has helped over 1,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse in the United States and internationally, including Ireland.

The “Dublin Archdiocese Report” confirms what victims and their families have known for decades: the Catholic Church conspired with itself, the Vatican, local law enforcement, and the national government to keep secret thousands of cases of abuse of innocent children. All those involved must be held accountable. Not only that, the bishops and civil authorities of the United States and all other nations who acted similarly and continue to act similarly, must be held accountable.

We call on the United Nations Human Rights Division to commence an investigation of the Roman Catholic Church (The Vatican) and national government officials worldwide for their pre-meditated, calculated, and arrogant malfeasance in the handling of child protection worldwide. No organization or country that treats its children in this manner deserves the title “nation-state” or “nation.” Rather, we urge the UN Human Rights Commission to suspend all rights to Vatican City and complicit governments until they put into place policies, procedures, and leaders who will act legally, justly, and rightly toward the young and innocent.

IRELAND
Voice from the Desert

Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, Founder and President of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (312 399 4747)

One sentence says it all: “The most senior figures in the Irish hierarchy did not report these crimes. . .because of an obsessive culture of secrecy and a desire to preserve the power and aura of the Church and to avoid giving scandal to their congregations.”Our hearts ache, just ache, for the thousands of once-trusting, innocent, devout Catholic girls and boys whose lives have been devastated by sick priests and evil bishops. Our hearts ache for the thousands of men and women whose childhoods were shattered, whose innocence was stolen, and whose trust was violated. We desperately hope that this report, however incomplete, brings each of them some measure of sorely-needed, long-overdue and inadequate but richly deserved comfort.

Our hearts also ache for the thousands of kids now at risk in the Dublin Archdiocese because so little has changed in the church hierarchy. In our view, perhaps the main reason so many children were so severely violated and so many Catholic employees hid the crimes can be summed up in just a few words: the rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy that is the church hierarchy. Sadly, despite all these crimes and revelations, that structure and culture remains fully intact.

MASSACHUSETTS
BishopAccountability.org

Video posted by the Blue Mass Group
Interview by Monica Brady-Myerov and another reporter
November 23, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzPiNvFgizs

[This transcript of the interview was made by BishopAccountability.org from the YouTube video. See also Coakley Made Deal in 1995 Priest Case, by Michael Rezendes, Boston Globe (11/23/09); and Senate ‘Forum’ Sounds More Like Fiery Debate, by Monica Brady-Myerov, WBUR (11/24/09). This interview occurred after a WGBH Greater Boston program during which Coakley briefly addressed the Geoghan probation deal and the abuse crisis; see our partial transcript. Brady-Myerov mentions information about prior DSS and Boston Police investigations, for which see a 7/11/96 memo by Rev. Brian M. Flatley. The Flatley memo lists Geoghan allegations received by the archdiocese after 1980, and also presents a different picture of the 1995 Coakley-Geoghan probation deal. In the memo, the redaction acronym MGS indicates a male Geoghan survivor.]

Martha Coakley: So, I think we made exactly the right decision given all the facts and circumstances. We certainly didn’t know that the church was sitting on complaints about him – they weren’t available to us – and even if we’d known that, it wouldn’t have changed what we could do in that instance for those boys.

Monica Brady-Myerov: But did you know that the Boston Police Department and the Social Services had done two prior investigations on other cases – this is according to BishopAccountability[.org] – that there were other substantiated claims that might also not have risen to the level of charges but could have alerted people to what kind of person this was, had it been tried in a public court.

Coakley: But see, we didn’t know that, and there was no way for us to know that, either from the church or from Boston. That would also have been irrelevant to these charges. What was most important, and what we accomplished, was taking Father Geoghan out of commission, basically, letting the church know that we knew, getting psychiatric records that he waived his privileges for, that we used, later on. That was the first complaint that we had had in Middlesex County around Father Geoghan; we did exactly what we should have done. I’ve been protecting kids for a long time, and then had experience, knowing that we had limited options, we did exactly what we should do – we went the extra mile to keep those kids safe and keep other kids safe.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday November 27 2009

THERE'S a line in St Mark's gospel in which Jesus rebukes his disciples for turning away a group of children.

"Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven".

At some point, a large fraternity of monstrous men of God took the biblical phrase "suffer little children" and twisted it into an evil carte blanche to do precisely that.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Even with the huge amount of evidence available to us, it is still difficult to fully comprehend the gross betrayal perpetrated on thousands of young children by the Catholic Church and state authorities in the Republic over a period of decades.

The very people that the abused children would expect to offer them solace and aid in fact colluded with the abusers to cover up a national scandal. The Ryan Report six months ago, which detailed the endemic abuse of children in Church-run institutions, was shocking. Yesterday's report of an investigation into how Church authorities and police reacted to known instances of abuse in Ireland's largest diocese of Dublin was, if anything, even more disturbing.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Most of the priests examined in the Murphy report into clerical abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese are still alive.

Many of them are being financially supported by the Church and some are living in parishes without restrictions.

Of the 46 priests, 11 were or are from religious orders. Four of those 11 are dead, four are in their orders living without restrictions, two are in their orders living with restrictions and one is estranged from his order and living without restrictions in another diocese outside Dublin.

PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Richard Gazarik
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, November 27, 2009

The fate of a St. Vincent College professor suspended from teaching and stripped of his functions as a priest because of alleged sexual misconduct rests with Vatican officials, according to St. Vincent Archabbot Douglas Nowicki.

At issue is the future of the Rev. Mark Gruber, 53, an associate professor of anthropology who was the subject of an investigation earlier this year that ended with state police saying their findings "did not support the allegations against him," according to a police report. Police indicated they would not pursue criminal charges against Gruber at that time.

In July, college President James Towey, Nowicki and other college officials met with police to discuss allegations Gruber was using a college computer "to view child pornography," according to a police report.

IRELAND
National Secular Society (United Kingdom)

The long awaited report into the child abuse cover up in the Catholic Church in Dublin has been published. It is, as expected, another catalogue of cruelty and corruption that almost boggles the mind. Read it here:

Such was the scale of the abuse and the subsequent cover ups that it is almost unbelievable that the Catholic Church is allowed anywhere near children. And yet still it runs schools and children’s homes and hands out diktats about morality to others when its own grasp of morality is very questionable. When the people conducting the investigation that led to this report approached the Vatican for information, both directly and through diplomatic channels, they were completely stonewalled. No reply. The Vatican still cannot face up to its guilt.

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

Two priests in the Down and Conor dioscese have been removed from their ministries amid allegations of child abuse, the BBC has learned.

Bishop Noel Treanor said that he could not make any comment on the cases because the authorities were investigating.

The move was revealed a day after the findings of the Dublin report into cases of child abuse.

IRELAND
BBC News

The Vatican should apologise for failing to co-operate with an inquiry into sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, a Dublin bishop has said.

Auxiliary Bishop Eamonn Walsh made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg news service on Friday.

The inquiry revealed that the Vatican and the Papal Nuncio in Dublin had ignored requests for information.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

Published Date: 27 November 2009
Allegations of child sex abuse have been made against 17 priests of the Derry diocese, the 'Journal' can reveal.

In a statement yesterday evening, Bishop Seamus Hegarty said all allegations have been reported to the relevant authorities on both sides of the border.

The statement said that, in addition, one priest on loan to the diocese has been convicted of child sex abuse.

It's understood there are no proceedings pending against any of the 17 priests.

IRELAND
Highland Radio

The Bishop of Raphoe has said that he would welcome an audit or any intervention which would help ensure the safety of children.

Dr Bishop Boyce was speaking as It emerged that one of the priests identified as a serial abuser in the Murphy Report served for a period in the Diocese of Raphoe.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By David Quinn

Friday November 27 2009

The Church put its own self-interest before the interests of others. There is no better way to negate Christianity than that

The Dublin report describes how Church authorities, prior to the late 1990s, insisted they had been on a 'learning curve' with regard to abuse of children by clergy. This, they said, was why they did not deal with child abuse allegations in the proper way.

The Commission of Investigation does not accept this defence. The commission is right, but if anything it is being a bit kind because Church authorities were on a learning curve, but of a different and much worse sort than the one imagined by the commission.

ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Weekly

Gustavo Arellano in Ex Cathedra
Fri., Nov. 27 2009
​
My family is a proud product of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim--my siblings got all their sacraments through Confirmation there (I was baptized at Our Lady of Guadalupe in SanTana but received the rest at San Bonifacio), and my sisters attended its now-shuttered school. So when I say the following, you know I say the truth: we LOVE our pedophile priests! John Lenihan (the man who gave me Communion) is the most notorious example, but we also harbored at least four more.

Part of St. Boniface's pedo-priest legacy is our insistence to let bygones be bygones and let rapists roam our aisles, and we'll continue that tradition tomorrow with the welcoming of Diocese of Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto to help celebrate the parish's 150th anniversary. Soto, of course, never diddled kids during his time at the Orange diocese as either a priest or bishop, but His Eminence sure didn't mind when others did the deed.

IRELAND
BBC News

The inquiry into sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland has disclosed that the Vatican ignored formal requests for information.

The inquiry asked for details of reports on abuse sent to the Vatican by the Dublin archdiocese in 2006.

The Vatican did not reply but told the Irish Foreign Affairs department the request "had not gone through appropriate diplomatic channels".

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Crimen Sollicitationis]

PATSY McGARRY and PADDY AGNEW in Rome

LETTERS SENT to the Vatican and the papal nuncio in Ireland seeking information on clerical sex abuse cases were ignored, the Dublin diocesan report disclosed yesterday.

In September 2006, the commission wrote to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeking information on reports of clerical child sex abuse sent to it by the Dublin archdiocese over a 30-year period. It also sought information on the document Crimen Solicitationis, which deals with clerical sex abuse.

The congregation did not reply.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Map -- Litany of Abuse: The key priests and the parishes where they served]

Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh today said he did not believe the Murphy inquiry into child abuse should be extended to the rest of the State.

The report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, the result of a three-year inquiry led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, was published yesterday. It found the “structures and rules” of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover-up of clerical child sex abuse and was critical of Bishop Walsh.

Dr Walsh, who was priests secretary under former archbishops Kevin McNamara and Desmond Connell, said it was his view the Dublin inquiry was a sample, with the pattern the same shown as in the previous Ferns inquiry.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

HARRY MCGEE

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has said that all bishops named in the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin as being part of a cover-up should resign.

Mr Kenny said this morning that people who were in positions if authority and knew what was going on should no longer continue in such positions.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

A prominent Irish priest says there should be resignations at the highest levels in the Church in the wake of the Murphy Report on clerical child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Fr Brian D'Arcy says the Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray and others have failed to protect children.

IRELAND
Independent Catholic News

Archbishop Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, issued the following statement today, in response to the report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation.

The report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation has been published. I wish to echo Archbishop Martin's reaction in that it makes for sad and shocking reading. The sadness and shock are all too familiar to those of us who have had to deal with similar problems in our own dioceses. So many lives have been devastated, so much suffering of the innocent, so much harm inflicted.

Everyone is deeply disgusted and disillusioned by the awfulness of the abuse, the vulnerability of the victims and the betrayal of the sacred trust placed in those who carried out this abuse. With our priests, I share these strong sentiments.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has reported a 300% increase in calls to its helpline following the publication of the Murphy report into child sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Several support groups have reported a surge in calls to helplines after the report, published yesterday, exposed a widespread cover-up of child abuse involving senior figures in the Church, abetted in particular by senior gardaí.

PORTLAND (OR)
Oregon Faith Report

By Portland Archdiocese,

The Archdiocese of Portland was found to be in compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People for 2009. A letter of compliance was sent to Archbishop John G. Vlazny by William A. Gavin, of The Gavin Group, Inc. The Gavin Group is an independent auditing agency hired to determine if the Archdiocese is in compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children. The Charter was adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in June 2002, and revised in June 2005. The Charter provides policies and procedures for the protection of children.

In August of this year, the Archdiocese submitted data related to the background checks, training of clergy, employees, volunteers, parents and children. The data was the basis for determining that the Archdiocese was compliant with the Charter. The policies and practices of the Archdiocese received full on-sight audits in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and a data collection audit was performed in 2008.

The Archdiocese staffs an Office for Child Protection/Victim Assistance, which began in 2002. Ms. Cathy Shannon is the office director. The commitment to a full time position has allowed Ms. Shannon to expand and strengthen the training programs, and provide the necessary follow-up with parishes and schools.

IRELAND
Bloomberg

By Colm Heatley

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Vatican’s failure to cooperate with a panel investigating the sexual abuse of children by priests in Ireland is “very regrettable,” said an auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of Dublin, Eamonn Walsh.

“I’m very disappointed with this failure to respond” to the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation, Walsh said in a telephone interview today. “I am surprised with the attitude, it is totally unnecessary. It doesn’t tally at all with the approach of the Holy Father,” he said, referring to Pope Benedict XVI.

Sexual abuse of children in the archdiocese between 1975 and 2004 was routinely covered up by church leaders, the independent commission, appointed in 2006 by the Irish government, said in a report published yesterday.

IRELAND
RTE News

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has said bishops named in the Murphy Report on abuse in the Dublin Catholic Archdiocese should resign.

Full report: Part One | Part Two | Appendices
List of helplines/counselling services
Minister for Justice's full statement

Mr Kenny described the report as 'another appalling litany of shame' and said apologies are not good enough.

AdvertisementHe said this was a case where men protected guilty men, people in authority knew what was going on, and it was not confined to the 1950s but went on to the 1980s.

IRELAND
Guardian (United Kingdom)

Vittorio Buffachi guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 November 2009

One priest admitted sexually abusing children every two weeks for 25 years. Some boys who were abused by one priest were later passed on to their friends and abused again. Another priest admitted abusing over 100 children. And as often the case with sexual violence, this is only the tip of the iceberg – for every victim who came forward, there are many more who seek peace in silence. These are only some of the findings of the report published yesterday by the commission of investigation into Dublin's Catholic archdiocese. The commission's report covers the period between 1 January 1975 and 30 April 2004. One can only assume that there were many more cases of child sex abuse prior to 1975, and even more cases of abuse around the Republic of Ireland outside of Dublin.

While all cases of child sex abuse are devastating, there is something about this story that is particularly disturbing. When children are systematically sexually abused for a period of decades by men wearing the collar, the perpetrators of violence are not only the deviant priests serving in parishes and religious orders. Violence is also done by those working at all levels in the Catholic church, both in Ireland and outside, who knew that these abuses were taking place and did nothing to stop this crime, or to bring the paedophiles to justice.

IRELAND
Reuters

By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Scores of victims of sexual abuse in Roman Catholic parishes in Dublin contacted counseling services on Thursday after the publication of a report showed archbishops obsessively covered up decades of widespread abuse.

Counselors said the report, which detailed numerous examples of violence and said one priest had abused more than 100 children, triggered victims' memories and prompted large numbers to speak out for the first time.

Faoiseamh, a counseling service set up by the Catholic Church, said calls had trebled this week while the Dublin Rape Crisis Center saw the number of calls from victims jump to more than 140 on Wednesday alone from a daily average of 25.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Sean McCarthaigh

Friday, November 27, 2009

CATHOLIC Church authorities in the Dublin Archdiocese covered up allegations of child sexual abuse over many years in order to avoid scandal and to protect the good name and assets of the institution, the Murphy Commission has concluded.

In a 720-page report, the Commission said the structure and rules of the Catholic Church had facilitated the failure of senior bishops to pass on details of such allegations to gardaí.

The Commission said it did not accept claims by senior Church leaders in Dublin that they were "on a learning curve" up to the late 1990s about the extent of child sexual abuse by priests. In a damning finding, the Commission said the archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of sexual abuse to that point were "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of assets".

IRELAND
The Epoch Times

By Martin Murphy
Epoch Times Staff

DUBLIN, Ireland—A new report detailing the sexual abuse of children by members of the Catholic clergy between 1975 and 2004 in Ireland was published yesterday.

“The report leaves us in no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was tolerated and covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other church authorities,” the Irish government said in response to the publication.

The report was produced by The Commission of Investigation into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese.

IRELAND
The Limerick Blogger

Update: The Irish Times reports that Enda Kenny has called on Murray to resign.

The report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, published yesterday, includes particularly scathing criticism of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray.

It concludes that Murray was aware “for many years” of complaints and suspicions of child sexual abuse (page 6), and concludes in usually blunt language that Murray dealt “badly” with complaints he received (page 13), “inexcusably” failing to investigate a number allegations (page 14).

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Breda Heffernan and Edel Kennedy

Friday November 27 2009

THE ARCHBISHOP of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, last night rallied to the defence of his predecessor, Cardinal Desmond Connell, after he was criticised in the report into child sex abuse.

Dr Martin urged people to "give people credit for the good things they did".

But he also called on those priests and church leaders identified in the Murphy report to examine their consciences to see if they were protecting children.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Friday November 27 2009

THREE assistant bishops in Dublin dealt "particularly badly with complaints".

Bishop Dermot O'Mahony, assistant from 1975 to his retirement in 1996, was aware of 13 priests in the sample of 46.

He did not inform Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Ryan about a number of complaints, the Commission of Investigation found. He agreed that it was "a wrong policy" to give little or no information to a parish priest about offenders assigned to their parish.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Fergus Black

Friday November 27 2009

THE investigation into the handling of child sexual abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese took three years to complete and cost an estimated €3.6m in administration, legal fees and staffing costs.

Chaired by Circuit Court Judge Yvonne Murphy, the commission was established in 2006 and its work culminated in the publication yesterday of a 700-page report.

Its investigation centred on the handling by church and State authorities of a representative sample of allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse against 46 priests operating under the aegis of the Dublin Archdiocese between 1975 and 2004.

IRELAND
Jamaica Observer

Friday, November 27, 2009

DUBLIN, Ireland (AFP) - Ireland's Catholic Church apologised and admitted its shame yesterday after a damning new report showed it covered up child sex abuse over more than three decades.

The Irish government also said sorry for failing to protect children after the latest report, published six months after a first landmark study revealed widespread abuse of children in Catholic care.

IRELAND
Los Angeles Times

By Janet Stobart

November 27, 2009

Reporting from London - Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin engaged in a widespread cover-up of abuses by clergy members for decades, a "scandal on an astonishing scale" that even saw officials taking out insurance policies to protect dioceses against future claims by the victims, a commission reported Thursday after a three-year investigation.

The commission, which investigated how the church and state agencies handled three decades of endemic child abuse by priests in the Irish capital, also criticized police and social and health authorities who, with a few exceptions, it said, ignored complaints or simply referred allegations back to the church hierarchy.

Presenting the government-commissioned report at a news conference in Dublin, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern spoke of his "revulsion" on reading the findings and called them a "scandal on an astonishing scale."

Guardian (United Kingdom)

Andrew Brown

If you want a litmus question to divide the Catholic Left from the Right, ask them who they blame for the paedophile priest scandals. The Right will say that it was gay priests; the left that it was the imposition of an unnatural celibacy. Underlying this is the great question of how the Church should accommodate itself to the modern understanding of sexuality, which is also our understanding of the person. Conservatives think of homosexuality as an intrinsic moral disorder; liberals mostly think the same of celibacy. Of course, Catholics in the centre say that celibacy can be made to work for some men, whatever their sexual orientation. Bishops have to say that, for they have to make the system work; and, as bishops, they are the heirs to the men who broke it and made the crisis by protecting criminal priests.

Now there is a little research to give comfort to all sides. The American Catholic bishops conference commissioned criminologists from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan to investigate the abuse crisis as they would investigate any other crime wave, and the preliminary results were presented to them last week.

There is no question but that most of the known victims of abuse were boys, not girls: the ratio was about 80:20. This is the figure used by right-wing catholics to suggest that the problem was priests who were attracted to boys. But the two researchers who talked to the conference about their findings suggested that this was less a matter of attraction than availability.

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, has called on anyone who has been abused by a member of the clergy to go to the civil authorities.

On Thursday, an inquiry into the Dublin archdiocese condemned the Catholic church for covering up decades of abuse of children.

The report also criticised the civil authorities for failing to investigate many of the crimes.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel Kennedy

Friday November 27 2009

FOUR former archbishops of Dublin were heavily criticised for their failure to report child sexual abuse and their determination to keep the crimes secret.

The archbishops who colluded in the cover-up were: Cardinal Desmond Connell, 1988-2004; Kevin McNamara, 1985-87; Dermot Ryan, 1972-1984; and John Charles McQuaid, 1940-1972.

The report found that until the mid 1990s, the archbishops were more interested in the "maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets" than dealing with cases of abuse. "All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated," the report found.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Diarmuid Martin

Friday November 27 2009

Archdiocese of Dublin failed to recognise the theft of childhood

IT is difficult to find words to describe how I feel today. As archbishop of a diocese for which I have pastoral responsibility, of my own native diocese, of the diocese for which I was ordained a priest, of a diocese which I love and hope to serve to the best of my ability, what can I say when I have to share with you the revolting story of the sexual assault and rape of so many young children and teenagers by priests of the archdiocese or who ministered in the diocese?

No words of apology will ever be sufficient.

Can I take this opportunity to thank Judge Yvonne Murphy and her team for their diligent and professional work in producing this report, which I expect will provide an invaluable framework for how we can better protect the children of today and the future. The report of the commission gives us some insight into the crimes that took place. But no report can give an indication of the suffering and trauma endured by the children, and indeed the suffering also of their family members.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Friday November 27 2009

THE late Monsignor Gerard Sheehy is identified by the commission as a powerful "behind-the-scenes villain" at the Drumcondra headquarters of the Dublin archdiocese.

One of the leading canon lawyers of the archdiocese, he was chancellor for 10 years, from 1965 to 1975, and wielded enormous influence as an advisor to archbishops John Charles McQuaid and Dermot Ryan.

The commission says he exercised a good deal of influence on how abuse cases should be handled, although he had no specific role in handling them.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Friday November 27 2009

A SYSTEMIC, calculated perversion of power and trust inflicted on helpless and innocent children.

This is how the Government has described the shocking report of the Commission of Investigation.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has vowed that the offending clerics will continue to be pursued. He has warned them "there is no hiding place" and that "justice -- even where it may have been delayed -- will not be denied."

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Shane Phelan, Dearbhail McDonald and Fiach Kelly

Friday November 27 2009

SOME 46 priests were dealt with in the Commission of Investigation report.

In total, the commission received information about complaints, suspicions or knowledge of child sex abuse in respect of 172 named priests and 11 unnamed priests.

Of the 46, just 11 have been named. The others have been given pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.

The following are examples of the cases investigated:

Fr James McNamee

McNamee built a swimming pool in his back yard while he was parish priest in Crumlin in the 1970s so he could fondle young boys.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

[with video]

THE Catholic Church last night admitted it stole the childhood of hundreds and failed them again when they had the courage to come forward.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, issued an unequivocal apology to victims of clerical child sex abuse for the systematic cover-up of hundreds of child sex abuse cases.

“The damage done to children abused by priests can never be undone,” he said. “As Archbishop of Dublin and as Diarmuid Martin, I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened to them. I am aware, however, that no words of apology will ever be sufficient.”

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday November 27 2009

They were anointed as 'princes', the congregation kissed their rings, and resplendent in their robes of purple, they tended to their flock. But far from being the custodians of innocence as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said last night, they presided over the "theft of childhood".

The pillars of the fiction on which the reputation of a pious hierarchy was built in Ireland over the past 50 years were brought crashing down last night by the devastating words of those who compiled the report into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

They have reached out with the force of Samson and brought a hollow edifice, once beyond and above reproach, tumbling.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Medb Ruane

Friday November 27 2009

DES Connell taught me. Ivan Payne once sat across a table and stared with those flat, dead eyes. This is what being a Dubliner means. You get to know some of the people and places Judge Yvonne Murphy mentions in her weighty report on child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Reading this story of your city is like being forced to sift garbage by hand in a dank lane with a bad smell. You want air. The place names may be where you played, worked, fell in love, or wheeled a buggy with your baby chuckling inside. Meanwhile, Catholic children were crushed because Catholic archbishops offered them as sacrifices to the false god called protecting the Dublin Archdiocese's reputation.

Judge Murphy's is a city without birdsong, joy or laughter. It's a dark alternative lying under Dublin's 1000th celebrations, its pride as European Cultural Capital and then as a sleek metropolis with a contemporary pace.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Marie Collins

Friday November 27 2009

IF only they had stopped him then.

But I was surprised to find out how much was known about my abuser.

The auxiliary bishop at the time wanted him reported to gardai because he considered child sexual abuse one of the worst crimes a priest could commit. John Charles McQuaid overruled him.

I was staggered that the church hierarchy knew so much. And that here was an opportunity within a year or two of my abuse in 1960 to have reported him to the gardai.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel Kennedy

Friday November 27 2009

THE survivors of clerical sex abuse have called for people who covered up the scandal and failed to remove accused priests from their parishes to be prosecuted.

Speaking after the release of the report yesterday, the Church was accused of "denial, arrogance and cover-up", with survivors saying there was no regard within the Catholic Church for child welfare. They also called for an investigation into child sex abuse in every diocese across the country.

"Despite all the evidence in the (past) reports, not one single person has been convicted of recklessly endangering children," said Maeve Lewis of support group One in Four. "That absolutely has to change.

IRELAND
4NI

The Garda Commissioner, Fachtna Murphy, has said he is "deeply sorry" for the Gardaí's failures to act on claims of abuse, revealed in the latest report on sexual abuse by Catholic Priests.

Commissioner Murphy said Thursday's report made for "disturbing" reading, and apologised for failings by Gardaí in responding to claims of abuse by victims.

Mr Murphy (pictured) said: "It makes for difficult and disturbing reading, detailing as it does many instances of sexual abuse and failure on the part of both Church and State authorities to protect victims.

IRELAND
Al Jazeera

An Irish government report has criticised Catholic church leaders for covering up decades of widespread sexual abuse of children.

One priest has admitted to abusing more than 100 minors.

The report shows that Irish archbishops were aware of complaints against 46 priests between 1975 and 2004. But, putting the reputation of the Church above the protection of children, they did not report them.

IRELAND
Yorkshire Post

Published Date: 27 November 2009
Paedophile priests got away with decades of abuse because the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted police immunity, a devastating report has revealed.

Four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs and, in some cases, with the blessing of senior law enforcers.

Hundreds of crimes from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.

IRELAND
Herald

Friday November 27 2009

PAEDOPHILE priests escaped the wrath of the law because senior gardai believed clerics were untouchable, it emerged yesterday.

A shocking report into clerical child abuse uncovered inappropriate contacts between members of the gardai and the Dublin Archdiocese.

It found the connivance of gardai with the Church effectively stifled one complaint, saw that there was no investigation into another and allowed a priest to emigrate.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

[Crimen Sollicitationis]

By John Cooney, Shane Phelan and Lesley-Anne Henry
Friday, 27 November 2009

Victims campaigners have reacted with anger and disbelief after it emerged the Vatican and papal nuncio in Ireland ignored repeated requests from investigators for information on clerical sexual abuses cases.

Judge Yvonne Murphy, who carried out a devastating report into clerical sexual abuse within the Dublin Archdiocese, revealed her investigation received no co-operation from the Vatican or its Irish diplomatic representative despite a number of requests.

The report said that in September 2006, the commission wrote to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeking information on reports of clerical child sex abuse sent to it by the Dublin Archdiocese over a 30-year period. It also sought information on the document ‘Crimen |Sollicitationis’, which deals with clerical sex abuse. The congregation did not reply.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Friday, 27 November 2009

Some 46 priests were dealt with in the Commission of Investigation report.

In total, the commission received information about complaints, suspicions or knowledge of child sex abuse in respect of 172 named priests and 11 unnamed priests.

However, if all of the cases were to be investigated, it is likely the commission's work would have had to continue for several more years.

IRELAND
Ekklesia

By staff writers
27 Nov 2009
The Report by the Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, has shown a horrific pattern of abuse and cover-up over many years.

The 720-page report, which follows a three-year investigation, clearly indicates that Bishops in Dublin covered up decades of child abuse by priests in order to protect the church's reputation.

Yesterday, the Irish government said the report and investigation demonstrates that "a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the archdiocese."

IRELAND
PRESS TV (Iran)

An investigating commission has reported that child sexual abuse has been covered up by the Dublin archdiocese and other church authorities for almost 30 years.

“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 report said Thursday.

“The abuse of children in Dublin was a scandal. The failure of the archdiocesan authorities to penalize the perpetrators is also a scandal,” it added.

IRELAND
Straits Times (Singapore)

DUBLIN - INVESTIGATIONS into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland should be widened nationwide, a leading campaigner said on Friday a day after a damning study condemned a decades-long cover-up.

The call came as one Irish newspaper branded the abuse of children in Catholic Church's care, which was covered up for more than 30 years by senior clergy, as 'satanic', blasting the 'rampant evil'.

'We are looking at this commission's report as the end of its work,' said Ms Marie Collins, a campaigner and survivor of abuse by a serial deviant priest named as Father Edmondus in the report. 'What I would call for, straight away, is for the remit (of the commission) to be extended to all of the dioceses in the country,' she told the RTE state broadcaster.

IRELAND
UTV

[with video]

Cardinal Desmond Connell has asked for forgiveness from child sex abuse victims, after a damning report revealed victims suffered at the hands of paedophile priests under his control.

The senior cleric said he was distressed and bewildered that those in such a sacred position could be responsible for the heinous crimes.

The frail 83-year-old, who was among four Archbishops criticised for not handing over information to authorities on abusers, said the abuse of children was an unspeakable crime.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

EITHNE DONNELLAN

ARCHBISHOP KEVIN McNAMARA: ARCHBISHOP KEVIN McNamara was one of four archbishops who handled child sex abuse complaints "badly". He did not report his knowledge of abuse to gardaí during his 1985-1987 tenure.

In fact the commission found he restored priestly duties to Fr William Carney in 1986 despite his having pleaded guilty to charges of child sex abuse in 1983 and despite continuing suspicions about him in relation to other children.

After initially suspending Fr Carney in April 1985, he agreed to allow him back if he attended a hospital in Waterford for alcohol treatment, though the priest did not have a drink problem. The problem was that this priest, who initially wanted to foster children, was a serial abuser.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

EITHNE DONNELLAN Health Correspondent

HSE RESPONSE: THE HEALTH Service Executive last night acknowledged that the report had highlighted instances where health boards could have done more for the victims of abuse and it apologised to all survivors for these shortcomings.

The report had found that in one case when the former Eastern Health Board was informed in March 1997 that a priest had abused students in a number of schools, it did not inform the schools. This, the report said, was “a serious lapse”.

Responding to the commission’s finding that it had been slow in providing necessary documentation to allow it conduct its investigations, the HSE said its ability to respond was hampered by data management systems in the HSE.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

STEVEN CARROLL

INDEMNITY: A DECISION by the Archdiocese of Dublin to obtain insurance to protect itself from exposure to claims arising from allegations of child sex abuse by its priests proved to be extraordinarily good value, the Dublin diocesan report says.

The policy eventually resulted in the archdiocese, and other dioceses which later signed up, receiving about €12.9 million by way of indemnity in return for premiums of only €50,800.

The decision to take out insurance was made in 1987. The timing is described as “significant” in the report, as the archdiocese then realised that child sex abuse was a serious problem.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

ANALYSIS: NOTHING QUITE as perfectly illustrates the moral rot at the core of institutional Catholicism in Ireland as the concept of “mental reservation”.

Exposed in the Dublin diocesan report, “it permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”.

A concept “developed and much discussed over the centuries”, it was explained to the commission by no less a person than Cardinal Desmond Connell.

The Irish Times

How The Story Of Abuse In Catholic Church Institutions Emerged Around The World

1984

The first case of clerical child sex abuse to go public: Fr Gilbert Gauthé in Louisiana, in the US, is revealed as a serial paedophile.

1985

Fr Tom Doyle, a US canon law expert, warns of dire consequences if scandal is not dealt with openly and effectively. He is ignored and removed from his position in the Vatican embassy in Washington.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FIONA GARTLAND

FALSE CLAIMS: THE REPORT has commended a Dublin priest who was falsely accused of abuse for the manner in which he handled the case.

Of the 46 cases of sexual abuse examined, only one priest was found to be falsely accused. In two other cases there were suspicions or concerns, but no actual complaint of child sexual abuse.

“Fr Ricardus” was ordained in the 1960s and worked in various parishes around Dublin. In January 2003 a man accused him of sexual assault, buggery and attempted oral rape when he was aged seven.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CAROL COULTER Legal Affairs Editor

GARDA ROLE: “THE CONNIVANCE by the Garda in effectively stifling one complaint and failing to investigate another, and in allowing Fr ‘X’ to leave the country is shocking.”

This is the verdict of the commission which compiled the Dublin diocesan report on the manner in which the law enforcement arm of the State dealt with one priest who was a serial child sex abuser.

In relation to another, it states: “The commission considers that Chief Supt O’Connor had inappropriate dealings with Bishop Kavanagh. It appears that Bishop Kavanagh tried to influence the conduct of the investigation and clearly did his best to ensure there would be no publicity.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

EITHNE DONNELLAN

OUR LADY'S HOSPITAL: TWO FORMER chaplains to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, abused patients while working at the facility but when this came to light the archdiocese did not inform the hospital, the report states.

It says the first issues in relation to a chaplain at the hospital – referred to in the report by the pseudonym Fr Edmondus – came to light in 1960 when photos he took of the private parts of children were sent to the UK to be developed and the processing company reported the matter to Scotland Yard.

Archbishop John Charles McQuaid was informed and interviewed the priest, who admitted taking the photos. Dr McQuaid noted afterwards that the priest clearly understood this was a “sinful act”, but he felt that to send him on retreat would be to defame him. The report says Dr McQuaid made no effort to establish who the photographed children were, nor did he put in place protocols for future chaplains to children at the hospital.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN

WHISTLEBLOWER: A FORMER seminarian, Ken Duggan had a deep sense of trust in the church. So when he reported that a priest was abusing an altar boy in the parish, he assumed something would be done about it immediately. It wasn’t.

“The whole experience of how they handled it was sickening. In a church which you studied for, you expect nothing but the highest of standards. You go in naively, expecting your elders and the church to take action.”

Duggan says he is encouraged by the Dublin diocesan report because it is a vital step in learning lessons from the past.

IRELAND
The Department of Justice

Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

Cover Part 1 (PDF - 161KB)

Signature Page (PDF - 111KB)

Part 1 Beginning (PDF - 39KB)

Part 1 (PDF - 161KB)

Cover Part 2 (PDF - 167KB)

Part 2 (PDF - 2.04MB)

Cover Appendices (PDF - 163KB)

Appendices (PDF - 965KB)

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN and PATSY McGARRY

FOUR SUCCESSIVE archbishops of Dublin responded to clerical child sexual abuse over a 30-year period in their diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up”.

This is one of the main conclusions of the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

The three-year inquiry, led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, found the “structures and rules” of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover-up.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The report shows that what lies at the heart of the Catholic Church in Ireland is a profound and widespread corruption, perpetrated by liars, child sex abusers and those at the very top who covered up their crimes, writes MARY RAFTERY

THERE IS one searing, indelible image to be found in the pages of the Dublin diocesan report on clerical child abuse. It is of Fr Noel Reynolds, who admitted sexually abusing dozens of children, towering over a small girl as he brutally inserts an object into her vagina and then her back passage.

That object is his crucifix.

The report details how this man was left as parish priest of Glendalough (and in charge of the local primary school) for almost three years after parents had complained about him to former archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell during the 1990s.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CORRUPTION OF power and the fundamentally rotten nature of relations between the Catholic Church and the State has been laid bare in a damning report into the rape and sexual abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese over a 30-year period. Denial and cover-up was the order of the day. Nothing changed until the late 1990s when a succession of scandals involving paedophile priests outraged public opinion and forced reforms through the courts, the Oireachtas and the archdiocese itself. There is still a distance to go.

“Repulsive” is a word that comes to mind in considering the response by former Dublin bishops and archbishops to clerical child abuse. As charted by the Murphy commission, the complaints of parents and their children were ignored and other families placed in immediate danger as prelates from John Charles McQuaid onwards suppressed scandals and took refuge in canon law to protect offenders at the expense of innocent children. The vast majority of uninvolved priests turned a blind eye.

As might be expected, given the traditional supine attitude of governments to the Catholic hierarchy, State agencies avoided involvement. What contact occurred with the Garda Síochána was regarded by the commission as “inappropriate”. Legislation was unclear and ineffective. Most cases referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions were not acted upon. Initially, one year’s delay in lodging a complaint was sufficient to have it rejected. But public anger, Supreme Court rulings and Dáil debates have since demolished that barrier.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

EITHNE DONNELLAN Health Correspondent

HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE: THE COMMISSION that compiled the Dublin diocesan report met significant delays in getting records from the Health Service Executive which it required to conduct its investigations, the report says.

Some documentation received from the HSE was provided as late as this year, even though the commission first wrote to the executive seeking all relevant documents in May 2006.

The HSE explained to the commission in 2006 it would have difficulties finding information on clerical sexual abuse as its social work records were filed in the names of victims rather than perpetrators.

IRELAND
The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL
Published: November 26, 2009
LONDON — The Catholic Church and the police in Ireland systematically colluded in covering up decades of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Dublin, according to a scathing investigative report released on Thursday.

The coverups spanned the tenures of four Dublin archbishops and continued through to the mid-1990’s and beyond, even after the church was beginning to admit to its failings and had professed to be confronting abuse by its priests.

But rather than helping the victims of such abuse, the church was instead concerned only with “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets,” said the 700-page report, prepared by a group appointed by the Irish government and called the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN Chief Reporter

Cases of serious clerical sexual abuse were detailed in the report

Fr X*

The priest, whose name was deleted from the report at its final editing stage, served in the Pro-Cathedral during the 1970s.

The first formal complaint against him came from a former altar boy. In more recent years, two men have come forward and complained of being sexually assaulted – in one instance to the extent of buggery – by him in the presbytery and altar boys’ changing rooms.

The commission says the case “encapsulates everything that was wrong with the archdiocese’s handling” of abuse cases. It says Archbishop Dermot Ryan protected the priest to an extraordinary degree and the welfare of children did not appear to play any part in his decisions.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

JAMIE SMYTH

ARCHBISHOP JOHN CHARLES McQUAID: ARCHBISHOP JOHN Charles McQuaid's failure to punish serial child sex abuser Fr Edmondus in the early 1960s was a disaster that "established a pattern of not holding abusers accountable" for decades to follow.

He also did not apply canon law properly when dealing with allegations of child sex abuse, even though he was familiar with its requirement, according to the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

Dr McQuaid, who was an extremely influential figure in Ireland as head of the archdiocese of Dublin between 1940 and 1972, dealt personally with several complaints of child sex abuse. He exercised tight control over who became aware of allegations and his handling of the Fr Edmondus case was "aimed at the avoidance of scandal and showed no concern for the welfare of children", the report says. It says the Fr Edmondus case holds special significance because it was one of the earliest in the commission's remit.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN

CARDINAL DESMOND CONNELL: CARDINAL DESMOND Connell has been criticised for being slow to act in recognising the seriousness of child sex abuse in Dublin while he was archbishop.

The commission of investigation into Dublin's Catholic archdiocese also says the failure of Cardinal Connell to admit liability for injury and damage in cases involving abusive priests added to victims' sense of hurt.

"He took an active interest in their [ the victims'] civil litigation against the archdiocese and personally approved the defences which were filed," the report says.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PAUL CULLEN

ARCHBISHOP DERMOT RYAN: ARCHBISHOP DERMOT Ryan handled complaints badly, never reported knowledge of abuse to the Garda and failed to properly investigate complaints against at least six priests, the report states.

The report says Dr Ryan, who was archbishop of Dublin from 1972 until his death in 1985, failed to properly investigate complaints made against Fr James McNamee, Fr Patrick Maguire, Fr Bill Carney and three other priests who are not named.

The report accuses Dr Ryan of having a deliberate policy of ensuring that knowledge of problems was as restricted as possible. As problems emerged, he got different people to deal with them, and this resulted in a "disastrous lack of co-ordination". It dismisses the notion that Dr Ryan or any of the other three archbishops during the period 1975-2004 could have been ignorant of the problem of child sexual abuse by clerics.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O'BRIEN

VICTIM'S REACTION: TWENTY-FIVE years after she first reported being sexually abused as a 12-year-old girl, Marie Collins finally feels vindicated.

“It’s the end of a very long fight and a very hard road,” she said. “I’ve always known I was telling the truth. To have an independent commission come out and validate what we went through is very important. It confirms what happened to me and other children.”

For Ms Collins, the journey to publication has taken well over two decades.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARY MINIHAN

PARISHES: THE FATHER of one of William Carney’s victims said he had to move his family out of Ayrfield to get away from the then priest, the report records.

Appointed curate in the parish in 1977 and dismissed from the clerical state in 1992, Carney is described in the report as “one of the most serious serial abusers investigated by the commission”.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault in 1983 and the archdiocese has paid compensation to six of his victims.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

FIONA GARTLAND

HANDLING OF CASES: COMPLAINTS OF child sexual abuse against 10 priests out of a total of 46 in Dublin were found to have been handled correctly by the archdiocese.

The commission looked in depth at a sample of 46 priests against whom allegations of child sexual abuse had been made.

The complaints handled correctly included those against laicised priest Frank McCarthy who pleaded guilty to assaulting two boys, as well as complaints against nine priests given pseudonyms in the report.

IRELAND
Scotsman

By Ed Carty
PAEDOPHILE priests got away with decades of horrific child sex abuse because the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted police immunity, a devastating report has revealed.

Four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs and in some cases with the blessing of senior law enforcers.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s went unreported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law, it was revealed.

IRELAND
The Independent

By Ed Carty and Sarah Stack, Press Association

The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report revealed today.

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardai treated clergy as though they were above the law.

IRELAND
The Independent

By David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent

A seemingly unending wave of sex scandals, many of them involving children, has decimated the once-proud standing of the Catholic church in Ireland and rendered its power a pale shadow of what it was.

The church was almost bound to lose influence over the last half-century, in common with a western world where the secular is generally prevailing against the religious. But in Ireland its fall from grace has been dramatic and drastic.

Church attendance is on the wane, with only a handful of people now come forward each year to train as priests or nuns - this in a country which for decades sent thousands of religious abroad.

IRELAND
ABC News (Australia0

[with audio]

TONY EASTLEY: A shocking report released overnight reveals that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland was covered up for decades by both the church and police.

Four archbishops have been named for their mishandling of hundreds of allegations.

The 720-page report says the official policy from 1975 to 2004 was to protect the reputation of the church at the expense of the victims.

Here's Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

EMMA ALBERICI: Maree Collins was sexually assaulted in 1960. When she reported the abuse the Catholic Church moved the priest to another parish. The report says that was a common practise for dealing with abusive priests - there was a conspiracy to protect the church not the welfare of the children in its care.

MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

John Pepitone Meagan Kelleher, FOX 4 Web Producer
November 25, 2009

New information in court documents connect the five men currently held on child sex charges in Lafayette County to more murder allegations.

Burrell Mohler Sr., his four sons and his brother are accused of sex crimes against children that date back to the 1980s. But in new court records, relatives of the men accuse them of committing murders and then making great efforts to conceal the crimes.

In an interview with a Jackson County Sheriff Deputy, one of the victims in the Lafayette County child sex investigation said she witnessed people other than family members being sexually molested by the Mohler men currently in custody. She also claimed she witnessed people being killed.

MISSOURI
The Daily News

Sean Comer, News Reporter

Authorities searching Burrell E. Mohler Jr.’s Independence home earlier this month found caches of pornography, video-viewing equipment, homemade video recordings and various Christian media.

Mohler – along with his father, four brothers and his father’s brother – face charges that the six men raped, sodomized and otherwise sexually abused Mohler’s five daughters and one son continuously between 1986 and 1991. At that time, the children were between the ages of six years and around 12 years old.

Items found Nov. 20 by Jackson County Sheriff’s Department detectives at Mohler Jr.’s home at 10007 E. 20th St. included two boxes of VHS tapes found in the attic with boxes of paperwork, blueprints, computer parts and photographs. Authorities also found a Christmas popcorn tin containing more paperwork and photographs.

IRELAND
The Times

Mary Kenny: Commentary
I once interviewed a mother whose son had been convicted of a paedophile crime. She did everything to protect him from public exposure, getting the case heard in another city and keeping it as secret as possible. Perhaps not admirable, but understandable.

This is the only way in which the Irish clerical abuse scandals can be understood. In traditional Catholic Ireland, the priests were not only respected and accorded power, they were also regarded as part of the family. Most of us had priests in the family and in a larger sense, the priests were part of the Irish nation, and had figured, in Anglo-Irish literary history as the soggarth aroon (darling priest), Anthony Trollope’s stories included.

So there was a family feeling extended to the clergy, as well as respect and deference. But where there is power, there will be abuse.

IRELAND
Channel 4

[with video]

By Channel 4 News

A report into abuse allegations against Catholic priests in the Dublin archdiocese reveals how senior clerics covered up the scandal and how police failed to take action, even when they knew what was going on.

Irish victims of child abuse at the hands of their parish priests have long complained of a cover-up.

Now, after a three-year investigation, a damning report into the archdiocese of Dublin has backed their claims, finding successive archbishops in Dublin spent decades hiding abuse to protect the reputation of the church.

IRELAND
UTV

The document that looked into clerical child abuse uncovered inappropriate contacts between members of the Republic's An Garda Siochana and the Dublin Archdiocese.

It found the connivance of Gardai with the church effectively stifled one complaint, saw that there was no investigation into another and allowed a priest to leave the country.

The Commission said it would not have been aware of allegations made to gardai had it not been for information in Church files.

IRELAND
ABC News (Australia)

A shocking report released overnight reveals that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland was covered up for decades by both the church and police.

The confronting report details the abuse of children by the clergy between 1975 and 2004 and accuses both the clergy and police of colluding to cover up the scandal.

The 720-page report says the official policy was to protect the reputation of the church at the expense of the victims.

IRELAND
Deutsche Welle (Germany)

An Irish judicial inquiry has found that for decades Dublin’s Roman Catholic archdiocese covered up the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.

The government-appointed commission said that at least three archbishops in office until 1987 largely ignored the complaints of child victims about incidents dating back as far as the 1940s. Instead, church officials maintained secrecy “obsessively” to protect abusive priests, the church's reputation and its assets.

The 720-page report by judge Yvonne Murphy and two other jurists examined how the church and state dealt with sexual abuse allegations lodged between 1975 until 2004. Complaints by victims were often denied and rarely investigated.

IRELAND
Herald Scotland

heraldscotland staff

Paedophile priests got away with decades of horrific child sex abuse because the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted police immunity, a devastating report has revealed.

Four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs and in some cases with the blessing of senior law enforcers.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law, it was revealed.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By Anne Sheridan
BISHOP of Limerick Donal Murray has said he does not intend to resign, after being implicated in a report which details how members of the Dublin Archdiocese handled complaints of child sexual abuse.

Speaking at the Social Service Centre on Henry Street this Thursday evening, Bishop Murray, who served 14 years as auxiliary bishop in the Dublin Archdiocese from 1982 to 1996, denied that he failed to act when allegations of sexual abuse were brought to his attention.

"I wish to state that I never deliberately or knowingly sought to cover up or withhold information brought to my attention. There were, as the report notes, occasions when roles/responsibilities were not clear or where I did not have full information concerning cases in which I was asked to become involved," said Bishop Murray.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The head of the Catholic Church in Ireland said today that he was shocked and ashamed by details in the Dublin Archdiocese clerical abuse report published today.

Cardinal Sean Brady, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, apologised to all those who were hurt and their families.

He then extended the apology to all the people of Ireland that the abuse was covered up to protect the reputation of the Church.

IRELAND
The Times

David Sharrock

Andrew Madden was proud to have been selected as Father Ivan Payne’s gardener. The 12-year-old altar boy from Dublin, who had ambitions to become a priest himself, felt blessed.

Yet on the very first day of his new duties, he was invited inside the parochial house to watch television, where Father Payne sat next to him on the sofa, put his arm around him — then put his hand on the boy’s crotch.

Brought up in a Roman Catholic country and taught to respect and obey the priesthood, the young Andrew was too frightened to stop the abuse. It continued for three years. Eventually, he confided in a schoolteacher, the bishop was informed and Payne admitted his guilt. The boy and his teacher were told that it was being taken care of and they heard no more.

IRELAND
New Zealand Herald

DUBLIN - Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law and most fellow clerics turned a blind eye, an investigation ordered by Ireland's government concluded Thursday.

The report found "a few (priests) were courageous and brought complaints to the attention of their superiors," but the "vast majority simply chose to turn a blind eye".

Speaking after the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said he felt deep shame and sorrow for how previous archbishops presided over endemic child abuse.

IRELAND
Independent Catholic News

Posted: Thursday, November 26, 2009 6:34 pm

Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh and primate of All Ireland, has just issued the following statement in response to the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

I am shocked and ashamed by the abuse of children described in the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin, published today.

I want to apologise to all those who have been hurt and their families.

IRELAND
Independent (United Kingdom)

By David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent

Thursday, 26 November 2009

A seemingly unending wave of sex scandals, many of them involving children, has decimated the once-proud standing of the Catholic church in Ireland and rendered its power a pale shadow of what it was.

The church was almost bound to lose influence over the last half-century, in common with a western world where the secular is generally prevailing against the religious. But in Ireland its fall from grace has been dramatic and drastic.

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

Remember Boston Auxiliary Bishop Robert Banks? In 1990, Banks slime-lined the notorious multiple molester Paul Shanley out to the Diocese of San Bernardino by writing him a letter of recommendation that said, "I can assure you that Father Shanley has no problem that would be a concern to your diocese." These assurances were taken. Shanley's now doing hard time in prison. Banks retired in 2003 with all flags flying.

Earlier this week an official report was released in Ireland detailing the manner in which the Archdiocese of Dublin dealt with sexual abuse by its clergy. Grim reading. Regrettably, it's all too familiar from what we've learned about the response tendered in the U.S.: an all but unbelievable concatenation of denial, table-turning, flat-out lying, and staggering leniency toward sexually anarchic priests.

A common explanation of the horrifying facts is that the higher clergy were prepared to do anything to protect the institutional Church. There's some truth to this: clearly much of the cover-up was designed to avoid bad press. But what comes through strongly in the report is the facility with which senior ecclesiastics flouted Canon Law and Church discipline in ways that disregarded the good of the institution, even in the crassest terms of corporate interest.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said no apology will ever be sufficient to make amends to those who had been abused by members of the clergy.

"This is the diocese in which I was born," Dr Martin told a news conference at his residence in Dublin. "How do I feel when I have to unveil here before you the revolting stories of the sexual assault and rape of many young children and teenagers by priests of the archdiocese?

“No words of apology will ever be sufficient,” he said, with tears in his eyes.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

RONAN MCGREEVY

Survivors’ group One in Four has called for the prosecution of those who covered up for child sex abusers in the Dublin Archdiocese.

The organisation said there could be “no excuse” for such a cover-up and those who did should be criminally culpable.

One in Four executive director Maeve Lewis said the offence of reckless endangerment of children was only introduced into law in 2006, but covering up of any serious crime has always been an offence under common law and the evidence was there to bring prosecutions.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By KENNETH HAYNES, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

A shocking and explosive report into child and sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese today slammed the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the horrors.

Investigators revealed how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against nearly fifth priests. It found that the Church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.

It also said that state authorities actually aided the cover-up by allowing the Church to operate outside the law.

MASSACHUSETTS
BishopAccountability.org

Video posted by the Blue Mass Group
Interview by Monica Brady-Myerov and another reporter
November 23, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzPiNvFgizs

[This transcript of the interview was made by BishopAccountability.org from the YouTube video. See also Coakley Made Deal in 1995 Priest Case, by Michael Rezendes, Boston Globe (11/23/09); and Senate ‘Forum’ Sounds More Like Fiery Debate, by Monica Brady-Myerov, WBUR (11/24/09). This interview occurred after a WGBH Greater Boston program during which Coakley briefly addressed the Geoghan probation deal and the abuse crisis; see our partial transcript. Brady-Myerov mentions information about prior DSS and Boston Police investigations, for which see a 7/11/96 memo by Rev. Brian M. Flatley. The Flatley memo lists Geoghan allegations received by the archdiocese after 1980, and also presents a different picture of the 1995 Coakley-Geoghan probation deal. In the memo, the redaction acronym MGS indicates a male Geoghan survivor.]

Martha Coakley: So, I think we made exactly the right decision given all the facts and circumstances. We certainly didn’t know that the church was sitting on complaints about him – they weren’t available to us – and even if we’d known that, it wouldn’t have changed what we could do in that instance for those boys.

Monica Brady-Myerov: But did you know that the Boston Police Department and the Social Services had done two prior investigations on other cases – this is according to BishopAccountability[.org] – that there were other substantiated claims that might also not have risen to the level of charges but could have alerted people to what kind of person this was, had it been tried in a public court.

Coakley: But see, we didn’t know that, and there was no way for us to know that, either from the church or from Boston. That would also have been irrelevant to these charges. What was most important, and what we accomplished, was taking Father Geoghan out of commission, basically, letting the church know that we knew, getting psychiatric records that he waived his privileges for, that we used, later on. That was the first complaint that we had had in Middlesex County around Father Geoghan; we did exactly what we should have done. I’ve been protecting kids for a long time, and then had experience, knowing that we had limited options, we did exactly what we should do – we went the extra mile to keep those kids safe and keep other kids safe.

ITALY
The Examiner

Associated Press
11/26/09 10:55 AM EST ROME — News reports in Italy say investigators are scrutinizing millions of euros worth of Vatican bank transactions to see if they violated money laundering regulations.

The central bank would only say Thursday "we haven't denied'" the reports that it alerted Italian financial police to the transactions. It declined to comment on Italian reports that transactions totaling around euro60 million ($90.43 million) annually for three years starting in 2003 were being investigated.

CANADA
The Windsor Star

By Sarah Sacheli, The Windsor Star
November 26, 2009

WINDSOR, Ont. — A former local Catholic priest charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission he founded in Haiti was denied bail Thursday and will remain in jail awaiting trial.

John Duarte, 43, the former parish priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Windsor, St. Gregory the Great in St. Clair Beach and St. Michael's in Leamington, appeared shaken at the decision of justice of the peace Elaine Babcock. His father, who had travelled to Windsor from his home in Strathroy with the expectation of taking his son home, wiped away tears after the court appearance.

Duarte’s bail hearing spanned two days over two weeks. All testimony and evidence presented at the hearing is subject to a publication ban, as are the justice of the peace’s reasons for her decision not to release the priest.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE EDWARDS

Fine Gael has accused the Government of "hypocrisy" in relation to their comments on the report of the investigation into the handling of child sex abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern and Minister for Children Barry Andrews were accused of "staggering hypocrisy" by Fine Gael children's spokesman Alan Shatter.

“Without doubt those in a position of authority within the church and those who perpetrated abuse deserve every condemnation and it is right that we react with horror to the revelations contained in the report," Mr Shatter said.

IRELAND
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Matthew Moore
Published: 6:00PM GMT 26 Nov 2009

Clergy were able to molest hundreds of vulnerable children because of a "systemic, calculated perversion of power" that put their abusers above the law, the Irish government said.

The damning verdict on the conduct of church and secular authorities followed a three-year investigation into allegations of child abuse by priests in Dublin going back to the 1960s.

Investigators who were given access to 60,000 previous secret church files accused four Archbishops of Dublin of deliberately suppressing evidence of "widespread" abuse.

IRELAND
Bangkok Post (Thailand)

The Catholic Church in Ireland covered up widespread allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests for four decades, a damning official report released on Thursday said.

Four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to enforce the law, the three-year investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest, found.

"The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets," the report said.

IRELAND
Guardian (United Kingdom)

Henry McDonald, Ireland Correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009

Ireland's police force colluded with the Catholic church in covering up clerical child abuse in Dublin on a massive scale, according to a damning report on decades of sex crimes committed by the country's priests.

The devastating three-volume report on the sexual and physical abuse of children by the clergy in Ireland's capital from 1975 to 2004 accuses four former archbishops, a host of clergy and senior members of the Garda Síochána of covering up the scandal.

It found that the "maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets" was more important than justice for the victims of sexual and physical abuse.

IRELAND
BBC News

[The full report can be read at www.justice.ie]

The Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin was set up in 2006 to investigate how Church and state authorities handled allegation of child abuse against 46 priests over a period from 1975 to 2004.

• One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis throughout his 25 year ministry.

• The Commission examined complaints in respect of over 320 children against 46 priests. Substantially more of the complaints relate to boys - the ratio is 2.3 boys to one girl.

IRELAND
The Associated Press

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP)

DUBLIN — Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin covered up decades of child abuse by priests to protect the church's reputation, an expert commission reported Thursday after a three-year investigation.

Abuse victims welcomed the report on the Dublin Archdiocese's mishandling of abuse complaints against its parish priests from 1975 to 2004. It followed a parallel report published in May into five decades of rape, beatings and other cruelty committed by Catholic orders of nuns and brothers nationwide in church-run schools, children's workhouses and orphanages from the 1930s to mid-1990s.

IRELAND
The Times

Case study

John Kelly was just 13 years old when he was committed in 1963 to Daingean Reformatory School in County Offaly, for the crime of having accepted a stolen chocolate bar from his brother.

"I was found guilty of receiving stolen goods but I was from a fractured family — my father was in England. Most of the other kids were orphans but we were all given criminal records.

"I was raped and buggered in that place by at least four different Brothers. But in fact what was worse was living with the fear of never knowing when you would be attacked.

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The 719-page report into child sex abuse by priests of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin is a shameful litany of secrecy, lies and cover-ups. It defies belief that ostensibly good, holy men turned their blindest eyes to the evidence in front of them, ignoring centuries of Biblical, Papal and Holy See documentation of clerical child sex abuse.

But they did. As evil piled upon unremitting evil, visiting the sins of the fathers upon generation after generation, canon law was ignored, allegations of abuse went unacknowledged and offending priests were moved around under the cloak of secrecy.

Obedience was not to God or the law, but to the overarching policy of: “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” As the report damningly says: “The highest priority was the protection of the reputation of the institution and the reputation of priests.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

President McAleese today expressed her “dismay” at the findings of the Commission of Investigation into the handling of abuse allegations by the Archdiocese of Dublin

“This failure to prioritise the protection and welfare of children has left a legacy of great hurt for those abused and their families and our first thoughts are with them on this very difficult day,” Mrs McAleese said. “It goes without saying that a key priority now is to ensure that every assistance and support is provided to them.

The President commended the commission members for their “invaluable” work.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE EDWARDS

Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray was among the former auxiliary bishops who dealt “badly” with allegations of child sex abuse in the Dublin diocese.

Bishop Murray served in the role from 1982 to 1996.

The commission was critical, in particular, of Bishop Murray’s handling of complaints about Fr Tom Naughton.

In June this year, Naughton pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault in relation to a complainant from the Wicklow parish of Valleymount, just as the commission’s report was being finalised.

IRELAND
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

ANDREW BUSHE
November 27, 2009

The Catholic Church in Ireland covered up widespread allegations of "evil" child sex abuse by priests for decades, according to a damning report released on Thursday.

Four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to inform police of the allegations, according to a three-year investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest.

Responding to the report -- the latest to reveal the scale of Catholic sex abuse -- the government immediately apologised for failing to protect children in Church care, and vowed in a statement that "this can never happen again".

IRELAND
Ireland Online

An abusive priest known as Fr Edmondus was not investigated by gardaí despite the opportunity for photographic evidence after attacks on sick children in hospital.

Victim Marie Collins told the Commission: “A man like that deserves our prayers but not our protection.”

Ordained in 1957, he abused several young people when chaplain in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Garda Commissioner says he is deeply sorry that people who sought assistance after they were sexually abused by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese did not receive the level of response or protection they were entitled to expect.

Fachtna Murphy said the events happened at a time when undue deference was shown to religious institutions and figures - "deference that can have no place in a criminal investigation".

Mr Murphy said the report into the sexual abuse committed in the Dublin Archdiocese over a 40-year period made for “difficult and disturbing reading”.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

An abuse-victims support group is calling for a criminal investigation into all those who "colluded and conspired to protect the Catholic Church" from sex-abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese.

One in Four has said the actions of the Gardaí and health boards as detailed in the Murphy report into clerical sex abuse, which was published today, were "particularly shocking".

IRELAND
BBC News

[with video]

A damning report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticised the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the abuse.

The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.

It found that the Church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said it was "very difficult to find words to describe how I feel today" after publication of the Murphy report into sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

He called the report - for which he thanked those who produced it - revealed a "revolting story of sexual assault and rape" by priests of the Archdiocese.

“No words of apology will ever be sufficient,” he added.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Paedophile priests escaped the consequences of the law because senior gardaí believed clerics were untouchable, it was revealed today.

A shocking report into clerical child abuse uncovered inappropriate contacts between members of the An Garda Siochána and the Dublin Archdiocese.

It found the connivance of gardaí with the Church effectively stifled one complaint, saw that there was no investigation into another and allowed a priest to leave the country.

IRELAND
Christian Today

by Brian Hutt
Posted: Thursday, November 26, 2009

A report published today says authorities in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin covered up child sexual abuse for decades.

The government-commissioned report investigated reports of child abuse by priests in Dublin from 1975 to 2004.

It stated that the Dublin Archdiocese's “pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets”.

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

[link to the report]

Ruth Gledhill

I quote:

'The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.'

Read the full report by the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese via the pdf links, below.

IRELAND
AFP

By Andrew Bushe (AFP)

DUBLIN — The Catholic Church in Ireland covered up widespread allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests for decades, according to a damning report released on Thursday.

Four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to inform police of the allegations, according to a three-year investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest.

The judicial probe discovered that the archbishops did not report abuse to police until the 1990s as part of a culture of secrecy and an over-riding wish to avoid damaging the reputation of the Church.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ÉANNA Ó CAOLLAÍ

The Government has said it apologises "without reservation or equivocation" for failures by State agencies in dealing with the issue of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the Government described as "shocking" the findings of today's report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin and said it raises "the most fundamental questions" for authorities in the Catholic Church.

The report "clearly" shows that "a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the Archdiocese" over a 30-year period, the statement said.

IRELAND
Bloomberg

By Colm Heatley and Ian Guider

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Irish Roman Catholic Church authorities routinely covered-up sexual abuse of children by priests in Dublin to avoid scandals and protect their assets, according to an investigation.

The “pre-occupation” was the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church,” Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation said in the report published in Dublin today. “All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated.”

The report, described by Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern as a catalogue of “evil after evil,” is a further blow to the Catholic Church, which has been rocked in recent years by sexual abuse scandals in countries including Ireland and the U.S. The report, the second this year to document abuse of children by clerics in Ireland, said senior clergy moved priests when told of abuse allegations.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PAMELA NEWENHAM and ELAINE EDWARDS

The recommendations of the report into the handling of allegations of child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese should not be "left on the shelf", the ISPCC has said.

Responding to the Commission of Investigation report which concluded that clerical child abuse was covered up by the Dublin Catholic Archdiocese and other authorities, the child protection charity said it acknowledged and welcomed the steps the Catholic Church had taken in recent years to address child protection and welfare.

It said, however, that child protection guidelines without the necessary statutory and administrative framework were not enough in themselves.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying.

According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying.”

It gives an example. “John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his curates. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his curates to answer the door. John asks the curate if the parish priest is in. The curate replies that he is not.”

IRELAND
CNN

(CNN) -- The Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities covered up clerical child abuse until the mid-1990s, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation's report said that it has "no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities" from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the report.

"The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages," it said.

IRELAND
The Associated Press

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP)

DUBLIN — Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin covered up decades of child abuse by priests in order to protect the church's reputation, an expert commission reported Thursday after a three-year investigation.

Abuse victims welcomed the commission's report on the Dublin Archdiocese's mishandling of child abuse cases — one of several government investigations into chronic child rape, beatings and other cruelty in Catholic-run schools, children's workhouses and orphanages in 1975-2004.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE EDWARDS

The Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, was among the former auxiliary bishops of Dublin who dealt “badly” with allegations of child sex abuse in the diocese.

The report on the handling of abuse allegations in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004 finds that many of the auxiliary bishops “knew of the fact of abuse”, as did a number of officials such as Monsignor Gerard Sheehy and Monsignor Alex Stenson.

“Bishop Donal Murray and Bishop Brendan Comiskey were aware for many years of complaints and/or suspicions of clerical child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese. Religious orders were also aware,” the report states.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY MCGARRY

Letters sent by the Commission of Investigation to the Vatican and to the papal nuncio in Ireland seeking information were ignored, the report has disclosed.

The commission wrote to the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Pope Benedict had been head until April 2005, in September 2006.

It was asking for information on the document `Crimen Solicitationis’, which dealt with clerical sex abuse, as well as information on reports of clerical child sexual abuse conveyed to it by the Dublin archdiocese over the relevant period.

The Vatican did not reply.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

The following is the full text of a statement issued this afternoon by the Government on the publication of the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

The Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin shows clearly that a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the Archdiocese over a 30 year period.

The perpetrators must continue to be brought to justice, and the people of Ireland must know that this can never happen again.

We all owe a profound debt to the victims of this injustice for their brave co-operation with the Commission in its work. The remarkable selflessness they have shown, in the face of great adversity, is a beacon of light in a harrowing catalogue of the abuse of power.

IRELAND
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:53 PM on 26th November 2009

The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report revealed today.

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardai treated clergy as though they were above the law.

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent

An Irish government report today accuses senior Catholic officials, including four archbishops, of conspiring in decades of covering up the abuse of children by priests in order to protect the Church’s reputation.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardai treated clergy as though they were above the law, according to a three-year inquiry by the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese.

The Commission said it uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” throughout the Church at work throughout the period it investigated from 1975 to 2004.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

26/11/2009 - 14:43:32

The Dublin Diocese report into allegations of clerical child abuse underlines the urgent need to put children’s rights into the Constitution, according to Amnesty International Ireland.

The group is calling on the Taoiseach Brian Cowen to set a date for a referendum "immediately".

Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland, said: "This report makes for deeply shocking reading, even after all that has gone before it.

IRELAND
RTE News

Thursday, 26 November 2009 15:18

Today we are publishing the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Earlier this year we had the Ryan report.

That dealt with the fate of thousands of children who had been placed by the state in residential institutions almost entirely run by the religious.

AdvertisementWhat is at issue here is children who were living in the community who were abused by clergy.

IRELAND
Javno (Croatia)

The Catholic Church in Ireland covered up widespread allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests for four decades, a damning official report released on Thursday said.

Four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to enforce the law, the three-year investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest, found.

- The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets - the report said.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday November 26 2009

The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report has revealed.

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardai treated clergy as though they were above the law.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PAMELA NEWENHAM

The Commission of Investigation report into allegations of clerical child abuse underlines the urgent need to put children’s rights into the Constitution, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

Responding to the Murphy report which concluded that clerical child abuse was covered up by the Dublin Catholic Archdiocese and other authorities, Amnesty International Ireland executive director said “our children are our responsibility, and not the responsibility of any agency that places itself above the law…today we see the consequences not only of cover up on the part of the Catholic Church, but also of State failure to guarantee children’s rights and child protection”.

Colm O’Gorman went on to say “we had the Ferns report in 2005, the Ryan report in May and now this…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”.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARY MINIHAN

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has warned that "a collar will protect no criminal".

Speaking at Government Buildings as the Commission of Investigation into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese report was released, Mr Ahern said there was no hiding place for those who had committed dreadful crimes against children.

"No Government can't guarantee that in the future there won't be evil people who will do evil things," he said.

"But the era where evil people could do so under the cover of the cloth, facilitated and shielded from the consequences by their authorities, while the lives of children were ruined with such cruelty, is over for good,” he said. "The bottom line is this: a collar will protect no criminal".

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, 26 November 2009

The Republic's government today vowed to bring paedophile priests to justice, branding their reign of terror a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust.

As a long-running Commission detailed the extent of cover-ups by Catholic hierarchy, the Government apologised, insisting dark days of abuse and secrecy were gone for good.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern pledged to bring offenders to court regardless of the time that has passed.

IRELAND
Herald

By Padraig O'Morain

Thursday November 26 2009

The focus of our anger as we read the Murphy Report today should be on the men who facilitated the abuse of children by priests -- or who blocked attempts by these victims and their families to get justice.

Of course we will be angry -- very angry -- at the unnamed men who used their position of authority and trust to abuse children.

But we will discover, I believe, that this cycle of abuse could have been broken if archbishops and others in authority in Dublin had tackled the issue head on.

IRELAND
Irish Health

[Posted: Thu 26/11/2009 by Joanne McCarthy]

The Church had an ‘obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal’, the Murphy commission into the Dublin Archdiocese’s management of cases of child sex abuse has said.

The report said that successive archbishops and bishops failed to report complaints to the gardaí prior to 1996. It found that all the archbishops of Dublin and many of the auxiliary bishops were aware of complaints.

According to the report, the Dublin Archdiocese was preoccupied by the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”, at least until the mid-1990s.

IRELAND
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(26 Nov 09 - RV)The long awaited Dublin Archdiocese Commission report into how allegations of child sex abuse by priests were handled by church and State authorities was published on Thursday by the Irish Minister for Justice and Minister of State for Children.

The commission was set up in March 2006 to investigate abuse allegations against 46 priests who were active in the archdiocese during the period from January 1975, to April 2004.

As well as detailing thousands of cases of abuse, the report addresses how allegations against the priests were dealt with by four archbishops who served as both chancellors and auxiliaries of the archdiocese over that three decade period.

IRELAND
RTE News

Thursday, 26 November 2009 15:10
The Minister for Justice has questioned how any member of the Catholic Church would be allowed put some clergy beyond the reach of the law.

Speaking at the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, Dermot Ahern, said the bottom line is a collar will not protect the criminal.

He said that on a human level, as a father and a member of the community, he felt a growing sense of revulsion and anger at the horrible evil acts committed against children.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

Mass-goers in the heart of the Dublin Archdiocese today claimed that the devastating clerical abuse scandals were wiping out trust in the Catholic Church.

As the daily afternoon service began at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral – the capital’s main parish – many people said the shocking revelations were turning away a once deeply devout nation.

Vincent McGuinness, 60, from Whitehall, said the hierarchy had been deliberately covering up the truth.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CIARA O'BRIEN

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has apologised for An Garda Siochána's failure to protect victims of clerical child sexual abuse.

The commissioner was speaking following the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

"It makes for difficult and disturbing reading, detailing as it does many instances of sexual abuse and failure on the part of both Church and State authorities to protect victims," he said.

IRELAND
Herald

By Clodagh Sheehy

Thursday November 26 2009

The 700-page report on child sex-abuse by Catholic priests in the Dublin Archdiocese has been launched.

Sex-abuse victims are being offered counselling services and a helpline by the HSE to help them cope with the revelations.

A statement said the authority had "planned a co-ordinated response so all survivors of abuse have access to a counselling service that best helps them".

Reuters

(Reuters) - Ireland published a report on Thursday saying church authorities in Dublin covered up child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s.
Following are details of other sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church around the world.

UNITED STATES - 2002 - Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law resigned over charges he transferred clerical abusers to other parishes to cover up the scandal.

-- June 2002 - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directed dioceses to investigate all charges of sexual abuse.

IRELAND
BBC News

A damning report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticised the church authorities for covering up the abuse.

The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.

It found that the church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.

IRELAND
The Press Association

The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report has revealed

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardai treated clergy as though they were above the law, an investigation by the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese revealed.

IRELAND
Reuters

By Andras Gergely
DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Dublin obsessively covered up widespread sexual abuse of children by priests until the mid-1990s in a misuse of the Church's central role in Irish society, an official report said on Thursday.

The government-commissioned inquiry into abuse in the Irish capital from 1975 to 2004, which came six months after a similarly damning report about Church-run industrial and reform schools, also accused state officials of abetting the cover-up.

The report, designed to show how church and state responded to charges of abusing children, said a representative sample of 46 priests made "abundantly clear" that it was widespread.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CAROL COULTER, Legal Affairs Editor

Judge Yvonne Murphy is no stranger to the issue of child sex abuse. As a judge of the Circuit Court since April 1998, most of which she served in the Circuit Criminal Court, she presided over dozens, if not hundreds, of cases involving the abuse of children by relatives, teachers, clergy and others.

Among the cases she heard was one where the female victim of alleged incest sought to have her accused brother identified, but Judge Murphy ruled that this was not permitted by law. This ruling was later upheld by the High Court.

She sat on the Special Criminal Court from 2003 until her appointment to head the commission.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE EDWARDS

The pre-occupations of the Dublin Archdiocese in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”, the Murphy commission has said.

It says the American phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell” was appropriate to describe the attitude of the Dublin Archdiocese to clerical sex abuse for most of the period covered by the report.

There was an “obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal” and successive Archbishops and bishops failed to report complaints to the gardai prior to 1996.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Cardinal Secrets]

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese came about because of the RTÉ Prime Time programme Cardinal Secrets , broadcast in October 2002.

Produced by Mary Raftery, with Mick Peelo reporting, it investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese.

The then minister for justice Michael McDowell said he was "very alarmed" by the programme which he found "deeply disturbing".

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Commission of Investigation into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese has concluded that there is “no doubt” that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the archdiocese and other Church authorities.

The commission’s report covers the period between January 1st 1975 and April 30th 2004. It said there cover-ups took place over much of this period.

In its report, published this afternoon, it has also found that “the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.”

IRELAND
The Irish Times

How the story of abuse in Catholic Church institutions emerged

Ireland Timeline

1987 – Insurance taken out by dioceses around the country to cover them against allegations of clerical child sex abuse.

1987 – The Irish state publishes its first set of guidelines on child abuse.

1988 – Desmond Connell appointed Archbishop of Dublin.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[counselling contacts]

PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The report into the handling of allegations of clerical child sex abuse Archdiocese of Dublin follows on the third statutory inquiry into Catholic Church affairs in Ireland since the beginning of this decade. A fourth inquiry is under way and is expected to report early next year.

1. The first statutory inquiry to investigate how Church and State authorities addressed allegations of clerical child sex abuse was the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

It was set up following the May 1999 apology on behalf of the State by then taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the Dail to people who had been residents as children in reformatories, industrial schools, and/orphanages in Ireland.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation Report]

ELAINE EDWARDS

The following are the main findings of the Murphy commission on the handling of abuse allegations by four archbishops and their auxiliary bishops in the Dublin Archdiocese

• Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (1940-1972): Was “familiar with the requirements of canon law but did not apply them fully”. “It is clear that his dealings with Fr Edmondus [not his real name] in 1960 were aimed at the avoidance of scandal and showed no concern for the welfare of children.”

• Archbishop Dermot Ryan (1972-1984): “Archbishop Ryan failed to properly investigate complaints, among others, against Fr McNamee, Fr Maguire, Fr Ioannes [not his real name], Fr Septimus [not his real name] and Fr Carney. He also ignored the advice given by a psychiatrist in the case of Fr Moore that he should not be placed in a parish setting. Fr Moore was subsequently convicted of a serious sexual assault on a young teenager while working as a parish curate. As problems emerged, Archbishop Ryan got different people to deal with them. This seems to have been a deliberate policy to ensure that knowledge of the problems was as restricted as possible. This resulted in a disastrous lack of co-ordination in responding to problems."

IRELAND
The Department of Justice

Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

Cover Part 1 (PDF - 161KB)

Signature Page (PDF - 111KB)

Part 1 Beginning (PDF - 39KB)

Part 1 (PDF - 161KB)

Cover Part 2 (PDF - 167KB)

Part 2 (PDF - 2.04MB)

Cover Appendices (PDF - 163KB)

Appendices (PDF - 965KB)

PROVIDENCE (RI)
Boston Herald

By Margery Eagan
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Boston Herald Columnist

Today I’m thankful for Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin, who has advised pro-choice Congressman Patrick Kennedy that he has no business receiving communion.

I’m thankful Tobin’s allowed me the chance to remind those taking him seriously - as, incredibly, some of you are - that a bishop can’t be holier-than-thou when he’s hiding the identities of more than 100 priests accused of molesting children - many of whom have admitted their guilt.

Who knows what these priests are up to. Do they still live in places like Providence and Warwick? Does one of them have some 12-year-old neighborhood boy in his lascivious sights?

NORTHERN IRELAND
4NI

A Co Antrim priest - who has already ceased his ministry over allegations of child-sex abuse - has been arrested and then bailed by the Metropolitan Police in London.

Fr Paul Symonds, a curate in the parish of Kirkinriola, Ballymena, was granted bail following his arrest on Monday on suspicion of indecent assault.

He has been relieved of his ministry and has to return to England in February.

IRELAND
Radio France Internationale

Ireland's Catholic Church authorities are bracing for strong criticism following a report that claims they mishandled child sexual abuse allegations against priests in Dublin - the country's largest archdiocese. The report, by the Dublin Archdiocese Commission, is to be made public Thursday.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has warned the findings of judge Yvonne Murphy, who led the first ever state investigation of how the once powerful church runs its affairs, would "shock us all".

They come just six months after a landmark report in May horrified mainly Catholics Ireland by revealing widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children in Catholic-run institutions dating back to the 1930s.

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

Published Date: 26 November 2009
LIMERICK media will be briefed on the Dublin Diocese report this evening following its publication today.

Set up in March 2006, the report has investigated how child sex abuse allegations against a representative sample of 46 priests was handled by 19 bishops in Dublin between January 1st, 1975, and April 30th, 2004.

Current Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray is one of the 19 bishops investigated by the report into how the abuse allegations were handled.

The Dublin Report will be published online on the Department of Justice website between 2.00pm and 2.30pm today on www.justice.ie

VERMONT
Burlington Free Press

By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • Thursday, November 26, 2009

Judge Helen Toor said Wednesday that she wants to explore the idea of conducting a joint trial for 15 of the 27 clerical sexual-abuse cases pending at Chittenden Superior Court in Burlington.

"We have all these cases, and I would like to see if there's a way to get them resolved," Toor told lawyers for the plaintiffs, mostly former altar boys molested by priests, and the defendant, the state's Roman Catholic diocese.

The 15 cases Toor might group involve claims by former altar boys at Christ the King Church who say they were molested by the same priest, the Rev. Edward Paquette, during a two-year period in the late 1970s. Some of the pending lawsuits were filed more than four years ago.

CALIFORNIA
Hollister Free Lance

By The Free Lance Staff

The pastor's son at a local church has been arrested and charged on suspicion of sexual misconduct with two minors, according to court records and the sheriff's office.

Ruben Matuk, 28, has been charged by the district attorney's office on suspicion of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, indecent exposure, attempted lewd acts with a child under 14 and sexual battery, according to San Benito County court records.

Investigators allege the crimes occurred at the Apostolic Full Gospel Church of Christ, 1515 Santa Ana Road, and also at Matuk's residence adjacent to the church address.

SALINAS (CA)
KSBW

SALINAS, Calif. -- A church youth leader pleaded not guilty to charges that he molested an 11-year-old girl at a Salinas church.

Erick Mendoza, 20, was arraigned at a Monterey County court on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of molestation.

Authorities said an 11-year-old girl, who was a member of the Iglesia Pentecostal Nueva Vida Church youth group, said Mendoza, who ran the youth group, molested her on church property.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Shane Phelan

Wednesday November 25 2009

WHILE the value of assets held by the Christian Brothers is now known, the value of those of the other religious orders, and how much more they can afford to pay abuse victims, has yet to be revealed.

A report on the assets of the 18 orders involved in the controversial 2002 indemnity deal with the Government has been with Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe for the past fortnight. But it is not yet clear when its contents will be made public.

In the immediate aftermath of the publication of the Ryan Commission report last May, the orders indicated they were unwilling to provide more funds beyond the €128m negotiated as part of the indemnity deal.

ALASKA
KTUU

by Channel 2 News staff
Wednesday, November 25, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks says it welcomes the bankruptcy agreement announced Tuesday.

Lawyers for the alleged victims of sexual abuse by diocese workers reached a nearly $10 million settlement which would pay compensation to the nearly 300 claimants. Most of the funding would come with the exchange of diocesan property for cash from an endowment trust.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

By Matthew Hay Brown | matthew.brown@baltsun.com

November 26, 2009

The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore has concluded that allegations of child sexual abuse against a Cumberland priest are credible and will not allow him to return to active ministry, Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien said.

Monsignor Thomas Bevan, pastor of St. Patrick Church from 1997 until August, has denied the allegations of four people who say he abused them in the 1970s, O'Brien wrote in a letter to parishioners delivered at Mass over the weekend.

The archdiocese removed Bevan, 73, in August pending an investigation into allegations by one man that Bevan abused him on a number of occasions when he was a student at the parish school of St. John Catholic Church in Frederick during the mid-1970s. In 2005, the archdiocese had investigated a similar allegation by a different person but concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to remove Bevan.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sam Smyth

Thursday November 26 2009

A FORMER garda commissioner and other senior gardai had improper communications with an Archbishop of Dublin in relation to criminal investigations into the abuse of children.

The cosy relationship between the gardai and the Catholic Church hierarchy is singled out for criticism in the long-awaited report by the inquiry into clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, the Irish Independent has learned.

The commission limited its inquiry into how the Dublin archdiocese dealt with sex abuse to cover 1975 to 2004. However, it is believed that investigators followed open files dating back several decades.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Walshe Education Editor

Thursday November 26 2009

THREE religious congregations have published their compensation packages for abuse victims on their websites in defiance of a request from Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe.

Following the disclosure in the Irish Independent yesterday of the Christian Brothers' extra compensation offer, the minister's officials contacted the remaining 17 orders, asking them not to publish the information just yet.

"Given the importance of ensuring that groups representing former residents are involved, our preference was to give the full picture at the one time and with all involved," Mr O'Keeffe said.

IRELAND
RTE News

Today sees the publication of the Murphy Commission's Report on how Church and State handled allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse in Dublin's Catholic Archdiocese.

Full list of counselling services

The HSE has teamed up with other organizations to enhance services for callers affected by the revelations. They're promising support ranging from a friendly voice on a helpline to a referral for face-to-face counselling.

IRELAND
BBC News

A report into how the Catholic Church in Dublin handled allegations of child abuse against its priests is expected to be as shocking as the Ryan Report.

BBC NI Dublin reporter Julie Kirby looks at how the clergy and victims' groups are bracing themselves for the fall-out in what has been called the darkest period in the history of the Irish Church.

Andrew Madden was an 11-year-old boy when he was sexually abused by a priest called Father Ivan Payne.

It was six years before he told a trusted teacher. He, in turn, went to a bishop and complained.

IRELAND
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Four Archbishops, including Cardinal Desmond Connell, will be named over their mishandling of hundreds of allegations, including not reporting crimes to the police.

The senior clerics' motive was to protect the church above defenceless children, the report will find.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission is the third inquiry in the last four years to rock the Catholic Church in Ireland following independent investigations into abusive priests.

UNITED STATES
Washington Times

By Julia Duin

Last week, at the annual business meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there was the oddest presentation at their Tuesday morning session.

Maggie Smith and Karen Terry from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York were giving an update on a long-awaited "causes and context" study of sexual abuse by priests. The USCCB contributed $1 million to fund it and an additional $915,000 came from donors, foundations and a federal agency - the National Institute of Justice - which gave $283,000.

Ms. Terry began with a timeline of the worst periods of sex abuse, which spiked in the early 1960s, peaked in the late 1970s, then fell in the 1980s. Sex abuse by priests was consistent with the "pattern of social change in the United States between 1950 and 2002," she said.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE DUBLIN Archdiocese Commission of Investigation has expressed regret that “due to circumstances outside its control” its report will not be published in full today.

Acknowledging the disappointment this would cause, it said this would also mean that “a full picture is not available” where the actions of some people in church and State authorities were concerned. It also described as “a cause of great regret” the leaking of the report, or parts of it, to a newspaper last weekend.

The report into how allegations of clerical child sex abuse were handled by church and State authorities in Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese will be published this afternoon by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern and Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews.

IRELAND
Canada.com

Disclosures in May of decades of floggings, slave labour and gang rape in much of Ireland's now defunct system of industrial and reform schools shamed the Irish and further eroded the Catholic Church's moral authority in the country.

A report on the handling of allegations of child sex abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin from 1975 to 2004 will be published on Thursday and church leaders have already warned of its horrific content.

"In these days we will be reading of sordid events that took place within the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Dublin," Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said at a ceremony last week.

IRELAND
BBC News

A second report into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in the Irish Republic is due to be released later.

The investigation - covering a 30-year period from 1975 - is expected to reveal the extent of how priests in Dublin covered up complaints.

The part played by the police and the state has also been investigated.

ILLINOIS
Forest Park Review

By Josh Adams
Editor

Web Extra!

Next to an apartment building that's home to one of the state's most prolific child predators, village officials are building a small playground for neighborhood children. As a result, state laws will force this convicted sex offender - and at least one other in the area - to find another place to live.

Former priest and convicted pedophile Fred Lenczycki moved into an apartment building on the 1100 block of Lathrop after he was released from state custody Sept. 22. He is the first clergyman in the U.S. deemed to be "sexually violent," and was responsible for molesting more than 30 victims, according to prosecutors. Lenczycki, 65, was imprisoned in 2004 after pleading guilty to abusing three boys during the early 1980s while serving a parish in Hinsdale.

Examiner

Bob Johnson

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture blasted the new vampire movie, New Moon, which is aimed at teens and young adults. The Pontifical Council for Culture claims the movie is a “moral vacuum with a deviant message”.

Based on the record of the Catholic Church protecting pedophile priests from justice, they're still protecting former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law by keeping him in the Vatican, while innocent children have their lives ruined at the hands of these clergymen, it doesn't seem the Catholic Church has the right to condemn the morals of anyone or anything.

IRELAND
The Times (United Kingdom)

David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent

The Christian Brothers religious order is to give €161 million (£146 million) in cash and property in reparation for its role in decades of child abuse in Ireland.

The Brothers said that €34 million in cash would be used to help victims of abuse, whose plight was identified in a government report in May. However, the move was criticised, with one victims’ group describing it as “mere smoke and mirrors”.

The Ryan report chronicled cases of tens of thousands of children who suffered systematic sexual, physical and mental abuse over decades at residential homes run by 18 congregations. It concluded that the Brothers order was responsible for most of the cases.

UNITED STATES
Reuters

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is an American freelance journalist living in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania who writes about religion.

By Elizabeth E. Evans

Two large scale American studies of clergy gone off the rails raise a host of troubling and baffling questions, not solely about clergy sexual misconduct, but about how and why parishioners either tolerate or ignore signals that something is wrong. One sad but perhaps inescapable conclusion from them is that it may be time to start taking a more skeptical look at those who exercise power in our congregations.

This fall, Baylor University’s School of Social Work released the results of a national study of clergy sexual misconduct with adults. Roughly three percent of adult women who attend religious services at least once a month have been the target of inappropriate sexual behavior by pastors, researchers found . That’s a startling number. But even more eye-popping were the number of congregants — eight percent — who knew about clergy sexual misconduct in their faith community.

The respect Americans institutions give to the separation of church and state makes misconduct seem like a private matter, Baylor Social Work School Dean Diana Garland told me in a telephone interview. But the power faith communities give to their clergy makes it a public one.

IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Nov. 25, 2009
By Michael Kelly Catholic News Service

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Irish Christian Brothers have announced plans to contribute 161 million euros ($243 million) for assistance to victims of abuse in government schools and orphanages run by the congregation.

"We understand and regret that nothing we say or do can turn back the clock for those affected by abuse," said Brother Edmund Garvey, a member of the congregation's leadership team, Nov. 25. "Our fervent hope is that the initiatives now proposed will assist in the provision of support services to former residents of the institutions as well as the facilities, resources and scope to protect, cherish and educate present and future generations of children."

Figures reviewed by a government-appointed assessment panel show that the brothers' total contribution amounts to 67 percent of their assets. The remainder of the assets will be used to continue the congregation's work educating 37,000 young people in 96 schools around Ireland and for the welfare of brothers.