Scottish prelate voices shame, resolve on sex abuse crisis

ROME
Crux

October 1, 2018

By Elise Harris

With clerical abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church in all corners of the globe, Scottish Archbishop Leo Cushley said that as someone who has given his life to the institution, he’s ashamed but also convinced that the Church, especially in Scotland, is in a “dramatically different” place today.

Referring to scandals that have erupted in Chile, Peru and the United States, among others, Cushley said each one is a cause of concern, “because this is an institution that I love and that I’ve given my life to, and I’m very dismayed when I see these things.”

In a sit-down interview with Crux, Cushley, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, said he can only speak authoritatively about the Church in Scotland, where he and his fellow prelates look at the abuse crisis “with great shame and great regret and that we wish it could be otherwise, but we do absolutely everything we can to get this right.”

What happened in the past, while tragic, is “dramatically different” than the current context, he said, voicing belief that at least on the home front, “we are doing very, very well indeed by any independent judgement or set of statistics.”

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