IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Bishop of Clonfert John Kirby has apologised for describing instances of paedophila as “friendship that crossed a boundary line”.

In a “special message” read at Masses in the diocese over the weekend, he said: “I may have given the general impression that I was somehow minimising the gravity of the criminal activity which we know to be child sexual abuse. This was never my intention and I wish to apologise, especially to all survivors, on this point.”

He continued: “The fact is that I reported the allegations to the civil authorities in the 1990s within days of becoming aware of the issue because I knew that crimes may have been committed.

“What I failed to appreciate sufficiently at that time was the addictive and repetitive compulsion of sexual abuse. Unfortunately, my words last week, separated from their context, came across…