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	Cardinal "Must Quit for Failing to Alert Police over Paedophile Priest" By Steven McCaffery Scotman March 17, 2010 http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Cardinal--39must-quit-.6157286.jp SENIOR Irish Catholic clerics who failed to alert police to child sex attacks in the 1970s instead advised that a notorious paedophile be given psychiatric treatment. The head of the Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, is facing continuing calls to quit after it emerged he gathered evidence in an internal inquiry into serial sex offender Father Brendan Smyth. Campaigners claim the failure to notify police at the time resulted in Smyth going on to engage in an 18-year catalogue of offences against children. Cardinal Brady has defended his role in the 1975 meeting where two children abused by Smyth were asked to take a vow of silence as part of an internal investigation by clergy. News of the episode emerged only at the weekend as a result of court proceedings. A Church statement yesterday repeated claims the cardinal was a junior figure at the time, but it also revealed that clergy who were privy to Smyth's crimes had advised psychiatric treatment. Maeve Lewis, executive director of the One In Four victims' group, said: "No-one is disputing that Cardinal Brady was not the most senior person in the investigation into Brendan Smyth. "But on the other hand, he was a man in his 30s, he must have known what happened was wrong and was a crime." Cardinal Brady has dismissed calls for his resignation since news of the 1975 case emerged and has said he will only step down if told to by the Pope. He has said that, while he would act differently today, he had obeyed Church law at the time by informing a bishop, who then stopped Smyth conducting the full duties of a priest. The cardinal – then a part-time secretary to the Bishop of Kilmore, the late Bishop Francis McKiernan – took notes during two meetings with children aged 14 and 15 who he believed had been abused by Smyth. Smyth was at the centre of one of the first paedophile priest scandals to rock the Catholic Church in Ireland. A seven-month delay in extraditing him to Northern Ireland also led to the collapse of Ireland's government in 1994, when the Labour Party withdrew from its coalition with Fianna Fail over claims a warrant was withheld. The repeat offender later admitted a litany of sex attacks on about 90 children in the north and south of Ireland over a 40-year period and was jailed. He died in prison in 1997. In the statement issued yesterday, the Catholic Communications Office said: "In late March 1975, Father Sean Brady was asked by his bishop, Bishop Francis McKiernan, to conduct a canonical inquiry into an allegation of child sexual abuse which was made by a boy in Dundalk, concerning a Norbertine priest, Father Brendan Smyth. Because he held a doctorate in Canon Law, Father Brady was asked to conduct this canonical inquiry; however he had no decision-making powers regarding the outcome of the inquiry. Bishop McKiernan held this responsibility. "On 29 March, 1975, Father Brady and two other priests interviewed a boy, 14, in Dundalk. Father Brady's role was to take notes. On 4 April, 1975, Father Brady interviewed a second boy, 15, in the Parochial House in Ballyjamesduff. On this occasion, Father Brady conducted the inquiry by himself and took notes. "At the end of both interviews, the boys were asked to confirm by oath the truthfulness of their statements and that they would preserve the confidentiality of the interview process. The intention of this oath was to avoid potential collusion in the gathering of the inquiry's evidence and to ensure that the process was robust enough to withstand challenge by the perpetrator."
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