IRELAND
Irish Times
JOHN FALLON
CLONFERT: THE BISHOP of Clonfert Dr John Kirby has said it never occurred to him that he should consider resigning after it emerged that he had moved two priests at the centre of child sex abuse allegations to other parishes in the 1990s.
He also dismissed a suggestion that it was unwritten church policy in the early 1990s to move priests suspected of abusing children to other parishes rather than report them to the Garda.
Dr Kirby (73) said he “hadn’t a clue” about how paedophiles operated 20 years ago and thought that it was a case of “a friendship that crossed a boundary line”.
Dr Kirby, who has been bishop of Clonfert since 1988, said he would handle matters differently now if complaints emerged about a priest and, while he felt moving the suspected priests to other parishes might solve the problem, he denied it was church policy at the time.
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