IRELAND
Patrick J. Wall
John Gerard Smyth joined the Norbertine Fathers in Northern Ireland in 1945 where he was given the religious name of Brendan to symbolize his total conversion to Christ. The hundreds of children Brendan raped and sodomized would likely have a different name for him: The Celtic Diablo.
The Celtic Diablo sexually abused children in county Cavan, Belfast, Dublin, Scotland, Wales, Providence Rhode Island, Langdon North Dakota and anywhere he heard confessions – his primary access point to abuse children.
But there was a whistleblower. Father Bruno Mulvihill O.Prae.–beginning when he was a novice at Kilnacrott Abbey–told his Norbertine superiors in 1964 that Brendan Smyth was abusing altar boys. Norbertine officials disregarded that warning and instead sent Brendan to Providence, RI, where he went on to hear more confessions and abuse more children.
Solicitation in the confessional (crimens sollicitationis) is one of the most ancient, consistent and unabated crimes particular to Roman Catholicism. But little has changed: Even with all the documented history of children being abused in the confessional, last week Benedict XVI reaffirmed the need for Catholics to go to private confession, where the priest represents Christ and has the divine power to forgive sins. No where else but the confessional can a child perpetrator find a forum where the power differential is so great and the policy of secrecy pervades.
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