SCOTLAND
The Observer

Kevin McKenna
The Observer, Saturday 10 August 2013

So the downfall of the Catholic church in Scotland didn’t occur at the hands of the Orangemen or the secular humanists of the church’s vivid imagination. All of the most grievous wounds it has suffered have turned out to be self-inflicted. The catalogue of sexual abuse by hundreds of priests stretching back decades; the sexual bullying of priests by its own cardinal; the cover-ups and intimidation of witnesses and victims – it didn’t need the assistance of any external agency to bring about the moral catastrophe that currently engulfs it.

The single beacon in this, the Scottish church’s darkest period, was provided by the most unlikely source. One of the victims of the sex abuse by priests at Fort Augustus Abbey School broke his anonymity last Sunday night and agreed to be interviewed on television. His words…