IRELAND
Irish Times
JOE HUMPHREYS
THE PAST is slowly catching up on Irish missionaries. As the one group within the Catholic Church that had escaped direct condemnation over the child sexual abuse scandals, they now sit uncomfortably in the spotlight.
The first three religious congregations to be investigated by the Irish church’s child protection watchdog all have significant missionary operations. The Spiritans (formerly Holy Ghost Fathers), the Dominican Friars and the Sacred Heart Missionaries were criticised to varying degrees by the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), the latter especially so.
While the board’s terms of reference are limited to investigating congregations’ compliance with child safeguarding standards in Ireland, its work is also helping to shed light on practices overseas.
Taken together with previous inquiries, it points to a serious catalogue of abuse and cover-up in mission countries – but one that has yet to be fully investigated.
One of the worst cases cited in the 2009 Murphy report, which examined abuse by priests in the Dublin diocese, was that of convicted paedophile Fr Patrick Maguire. The Columban Father worked in Japan between 1961 and 1974, where his abusing was first reported to the congregation by a nun. In 1997, Fr Maguire admitted to having abused about 70 boys in a number of countries, 13 of whom were in Japan.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.