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	Plenty of Lessons to Go around By Kevin Cullen Boston Globe June 1, 2010 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/06/01/plenty_of_lessons_to_go_around/ It is not unfair to say that if his name were not Sean Patrick O’Malley, Boston’s cardinal and archbishop would not be shipping up to Dublin. And if Boston had not been the epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse crisis that continues to rumble across the United States and Europe, Cardinal O’Malley would not be spending some time in the near future advising his Dublin counterpart, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, on how to weather a scandal. But it’s more than that. O’Malley has a certain credibility in Ireland, one that comes from knowing the place. When he was a boy, O’Malley stood in the cottage of one of his relatives in County Mayo — in the west of Ireland, where the O’Malleys are a huge clan — and he saw two photos above the hearth. One was of the pope. The other was of Jack Kennedy. That was a time when the certainties of Rome and the promise of America held equal sway in Ireland. Those days are long gone. But O’Malley’s having seen them, having appreciated them, means he is not a stranger to the land of his ancestors. Ireland sent thousands of priests to Boston over the last two centuries. Now, it seems fitting that Boston is sending one back, if only for some advice. O’Malley’s staff sees his selection by Pope Benedict to help the Dublin Archdiocese as a validation of O’Malley’s stewardship in Boston. In Ireland, where the scandal of coverup burns as bright now as it did here eight years ago, Boston is often used as a benchmark in these things. The Rev. John Connolly is O’Malley’s go-to guy on handling the still white-hot issue of clerical abuse. He, like others who have watched O’Malley spend the last seven years trying to manage the biggest challenge of any bishop anywhere, sees O’Malley’s dispatch to Dublin as a recognition that something right has happened in Boston. That the systems put in place, the emphasis O’Malley has put on healing, are working. But Connolly said O’Malley was taking on the new assignment with a sense of humility. “I’d be careful not to make it seem like the work is done in Boston,’’ said Father Connolly. “It’s very much a work in progress.’’ So it is in Dublin, too, where a report on clerical abuse released last year continues to rock the church in what was long considered Europe’s most culturally Catholic country. Mass attendance is down. Irish bishops are being pressured by secular forces like never before. Ireland’s Archbishop Martin has angered some of his own priests by refusing to defend bishops who enabled abusive priests. He has been content to let four complicit Irish bishops resign. Martin’s stance has won praise from victims. But in doing this, Martin is far more aggressive in confronting trouble in his own church than his American counterparts. Cardinal Law, O’Malley’s predecessor, was the only American bishop to resign for enabling, as opposed to committing, sexual abuse. In Ireland, in part because Archbishop Martin was willing to take the heat, the new paradigm is that bishops who enabled abuse by moving offenders from parish to parish and shielding them from police have to go. Helen McGonigle has a personal understanding of what is needed. When she was 6 years old, an Irish priest named Brendan Smyth, who was sent across the Atlantic because he had abused hundreds of kids in Ireland, got his hands on her in East Greenwich, R.I. She is now a lawyer in Connecticut. She wants O’Malley’s work in Ireland to be more than public relations. “While we’re still waiting for the names, Cardinal O’Malley has said he is committed to releasing by the end of this year the names of all the priests in the Archdiocese of Boston who were accused of abuse,’’ she said. “So now he can go to Dublin and tell Archbishop Martin that they should do the same in Ireland.’’ She thinks Martin’s presence in Boston is as needed as O’Malley’s in Dublin. “Let him [Martin] explain to the bishops here that they have to be accountable for their actions, for not turning abusers over to secular authority, for not truly starting the healing, because if you ask most of the survivors, they will tell you the healing starts only when all the enablers are held accountable. “All day, I’ve been hearing on the news that Cardinal O’Malley can teach the Irish something on this. I’d say that when it comes to holding bishops accountable, the Irish could teach us something.’’ Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com
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