IRELAND
Irish Times
ANALYSIS: It is risible for a bishop to suggest he thought in the early 1990s that the sex abuse of a child was ‘a friendship that crossed a boundary’, writes PATSY McGARRY
ANYBODY WHO believed, even hoped, that the Catholic Church in Ireland had passed the peak of its clerical child sex abuse crisis must be in despair. The findings in the seven reviews of child protection practices in four dioceses and three religious congregations published yesterday were “disappointing”, said Ian Elliott, with remarkable restraint.
Chief executive of the church’s child protection watchdog, its National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), he led the reviews in the dioceses of Clonfert, Cork Ross, Kildare Leighlin, Limerick, as well as the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart congregation, the male Dominican congregation and the Spiritan, better known to most people as the Holy Ghost Fathers.
Those who have defended the church on the basis of the “historical” nature of abuse complaints against priests must feel sickened by these reports. Despite their valiant efforts at upholding a beleaguered and beloved institution, they too have been badly let down by senior church figures, again, when it comes to implementing basic child safeguarding practices.
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