By Douglas Dalby and Rachel Donadio
The Statesman
July 14, 2011
http://www.statesman.com/news/world/irish-report-catholic-church-abuse-coverup-persisted-into-1606817.html
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| Paul Faith/ASSOCIATED PRESS |
The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the behavior by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by the Irish government.
Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter called the findings "truly scandalous," adding that the church's earlier promises to report all abuse cases since 1995 to civil authorities were "built on sand." Abuse victims called the report more evidence that the church sought to protect priests rather than children.
Also Wednesday, Germany's Roman Catholic bishops took new steps to bring previously unreported abuse to light. The German bishops said they would allow outside investigators to look for abuse cases in diocesan personnel records dating back at least 10 years, and in some cases all the way to 1945, though there were indications that some crucial records might have been destroyed. The move is an effort to restore trust after record numbers of Catholics left the church in Germany last year following the discovery of hundreds of past cases of child abuse.
In both Germany and Ireland, the abuse scandal has touched the highest echelons of the church. The new developments showed the tensions between civil and ecclesiastical justice in a crisis that has shaken the church's moral authority worldwide.
The Cloyne Report, as it is known, drafted by an independent investigative committee led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, found that the clergy in the Diocese of Cloyne, a rural area of County Cork, didn't act on complaints against 19 priests from 1996 to 2009. The report also found that two allegations against one priest were reported to the police, but that there was no evidence of any subsequent inquiry.
John Magee, the bishop of Cloyne since 1987, who had previously served as private secretary to three popes, resigned last year. In a statement Wednesday, Magee offered a "sincere apology."
"While I was fully supportive of the procedures, I now realize that I should have taken a much firmer role in ensuring their implementation," Magee said. "I accept in its entirety the commission's view that the primary responsibility for the failure to fully implement the church procedures in the diocese lay with me."
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Wednesday that the Holy See had no comment on the Cloyne Report.
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