IRELAND
Irish Independent
Cardinal Brady will be glad to step out of the limelight but should have quit in 2010
David Quinn Twitter
Published 09/09/2014
The acceptance by Pope Francis of the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland brings to an end a chapter in the life of the Irish Catholic Church.
Cardinal Brady is the last remaining senior prelate who is indelibly associated in the public mind with the Church’s appalling handling of the clerical sex abuse scandals.
Dr Brady became the Archbishop of Armagh in October 1996. He had been Cardinal Cahal Daly’s Coadjutor Archbishop and he automatically took over from Cardinal Daly once the cardinal stood down. In just the same way his own Coadjutor, Archbishop Eamon Martin, now automatically succeeds Dr Brady.
The year 1996 was a fateful one in the recent history of the Irish Church. Earlier that year, the bishops published their first-ever child-protection guidelines, signalling they were finally learning – albeit slowly and very painfully – the lessons of their past disastrous handling of the child abuse scandals.
Most of the scandals that have badly damaged the reputation of the Church pre-date 1996, that is, the incidents of abuse that later come to light happened prior to 1996, with a big majority occurring in the 1970s and 1980s.
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