BishopAccountability.org
	Pope Backs Man Who Cleaned up Diocese of Ferns New Ross Echo August 19 2010 http://www.newrossecho.ie/news/story/?trs=mhqlkfkfau&cat=news EAMONN WALSH, based on his experience in the Dublin Archdiocese since 1985, was the ideal replacement for Brendan Comiskey, a businesslike, straight talking, safe pair of hands, and was parachuted into the Diocese of Ferns by the hierarchy without any fanfare in 2002. He had been given a licence to clean-up Ferns, and set about the considerable task with energy and alacrity. His record appeared solid: he had served as secretary to three bishops McNamara, Carroll and Connell from 1985 to 1990, when he was ordained Titular Bishop of Elmham and Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin with pastoral responsibility for the deaneries of Blessington, Tallaght and South Dublin, among the most populous in the country. During his time as secretary, he was not party to discussions between archbishop and priest and, in truth, there was no clear job description for an auxiliary bishop, a lapse which would come back to haunt him and others. As Walsh admitted: ‘If I was approached on a matter of a confidential nature, or if I had a concern which had been expressed to me, I brought this to the attention of the Archbishop. Archbishop Connell took a very conscientious line in respecting a person’s reputation, and on any other matter he deemed confidential. Information given in this way was not shared at meetings with others present. ‘ Offending priests were given appointments on the basis of medical assessment, which suggested they were fit for ministry, with appalling consequences for their victims. Long before Walsh was ensconced in Ferns in unenviable circumstances, bringing order to the most disreputable and quarrelsome diocese in the western world after Boston, he had established a singular response to clerical abuse of children, that was out of sync with others in the church. For example, although the Archdiocese of Dublin committed itself to mandatory reporting of abuse in 1996, Walsh advocated this response six years earlier, a time when he accepted bad decisions were made because of an absence of understanding of paedophilia. He was made Chairperson of the Irish Bishops’ Liaison Committee on Child Abuse in 1999, establishing a National Child Protection Office and commissioning Time To Listen, a research study on clerical sexual abuse, and the favourable response to the report paved the way for his appointment as Apostolic Administrator in Ferns a year later. He wasn’t in Wexford a wet day when he made his presence felt: he got to know the priests in the diocese, he visited parishes, he addressed congregations, he met abuse victims, he was accessible to the media, he studied decades of diocesan files and invited, in record time, a number of priests to seek voluntary laicization. If they declined, they were defrocked. In applying the 2001 papal directive, Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, to all cases of allegations of abuse against clergy in Wexford -The Ferns Inquiry probed over 100 allegations against 21 priests between 1962 and 2002. Between 1932 and 2002, 248 priests were ordained in the diocese acted in a manner that, if not always adhering to the benefit of doubt, was decisive. The cataclysmic impact of The Ferns Report reinvigorated the vexatious debate about the church’s guidelines on child abuse. The ink in The Ferns Report had little time to dry when the Irish Episcopal Conference, the Irish Missionary Union and the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) published its new child protection policy, Our Children, Our Church, neatly paraphrasing an often repeated expression by Bishop Walsh in The Ferns Report, that the welfare of the child is paramount. But was it?
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.