NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times
August 23, 2018
By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
Gortahork, Ireland – If any place illustrates the depth and depravity of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church — and why the Irish are so angry about it — it is this unlikely corner of the country, where among rolling hills of wild heather, castles and bucolic fishing villages, predatory priests terrorized children with impunity for decades.
County Donegal, which overlooks the Atlantic in northwestern Ireland, has fewer than 160,000 residents, but it may have the worst record of clerical abuse in the country. According to a watchdog group that monitors the Catholic Church in Ireland, 14 priests have been accused in recent years, four of whom were convicted. They include the Rev. Eugene Greene, one of the nation’s most notorious pedophile priests, who served nine years in prison for raping and molesting 26 boys between 1965 and 1982, though the real figure may be far higher.
Yet this year, when Pope Francis needed someone to head a neighboring diocese, he chose Bishop Philip Boyce, who had been heavily criticized for refusing to defrock Father Greene when the priest was under his management in the late 1990s.
As Francis prepares for a visit to Ireland this weekend — the first by a pope since John Paul II in 1979 — the painful specter of such abuses hangs over his trip, as well as the church’s long history of protecting pedophile priests. It is cases like this one that many faithful say make it incumbent on Francis to give them not just words, but action.
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Residents said Francis’ appointment of Bishop Boyce demonstrated that the church’s record of shuffling along abusers and those who protected them remained unbroken.
Bishop Boyce “was keen to protect the family of the convicted priest from further trauma by not initiating laicization,” the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church found in a 2011 review.
A religious mural near Meenlaragh. As Pope Francis prepares to visit Ireland this weekend, the country’s painful history of clerical sexual abuse hangs over his trip.CreditPaulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
For those in Donegal, Bishop Boyce’s appointment was salt in the wounds. Francis chose him to replace John McAreavey, who resigned as bishop of Dromore after coming under fire for officiating at the funeral of a priest he knew to be a pedophile. It is unclear whether Bishop McAreavey was disciplined by the church.
Bishop Boyce did not respond to requests for comment.
Father Greene, now in his 90s, is thought to be living in a protected home run by an ecclesiastical order in Cork and enjoying a “happy retirement,” said John McAteer, the editor of the weekly Tirconaill Tribune. “I find it shocking,” he said.
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