BishopAccountability.org
	Pope Meets Irish Bishops to Discuss Clergy Abuse By Elisabetta Povoledo The New York Times February 13, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/europe/16pope.html VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI began meeting individually with 24 serving Irish bishops on Monday to discuss a clerical abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The two days of discussions with the pope and members of the Vatican hierarchy are part of a “journey of repentance, reconciliation and renewal,” Archbishop Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland’s Catholics, told Vatican Radio. One of the Irish bishops, Joseph Duffy, said at a news conference in Rome on Sunday that the meetings were intended to “consider an approach that will help to give assurance to families and restore confidence and serenity with the clergy and the faithful.” The meetings are being held in response to a 700-page report issued in Ireland in November that accused church leaders and the police there of covering up decades of child sexual abuse by priests in Dublin. A separate report issued in May chronicled decades of sexual and physical abuse of children studying at church-run residential schools in the country. The Irish church has been under scrutiny for at least a decade, and the pope has met with church leaders on various occasions to discuss the fallout of the abuses there. Four Irish bishops offered their resignation in the wake of the publication of the so-called Murphy report in November, but the pope has accepted only one. No further resignations were on the agenda for this week’s meeting, The Associated Press reported Monday. The pope has been preparing a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics that will indicate initiatives to be taken in response to the scandal. Celebrating Mass in the Vatican ahead of Monday’s meeting, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, invited the bishops to consider this moment for the Irish church — which saw “some churchmen involved in particularly abhorrent acts” — as a “serious test” of faith, according to Vatican Radio. Trials that come from inside are “naturally more difficult and humiliating,” Cardinal Bertone said, but “this kind of test strips us of any false security and pushes us to entrust ourselves to God alone.” Only through humility can “we achieve a true rebirth,” he was quoted as saying. A statement from the Irish Bishops’ Conference issued Monday said prayers were offered at the Mass for “the survivors of abuse, the people, priests and religious of Ireland” and for the “success of the meeting.”
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.