IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

12 MAY 2014

The Catholic Church’s own watchdog has hit out at some religious orders in Ireland for being slow to enforce child protection measures.

In the latest series of probes launched after numerous paedophile scandals, it was found that some priests were being allowed to continue ministry despite admissions of wrongdoing.

Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, commended church dioceses for improving protection but warned about a lack of progress in orders.

“For the religious congregations and missionary societies, progress appears slower,” she said.

“There has been a sea change in that all are now conscious of their obligations around reporting, (but) unfortunately in two cases we saw that priests continued in ministry even though admissions were made and in another order cases against deceased brothers, former brothers and lay teachers were not always…