IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
By Colette Browne
THE Catholic Church is unlikely to employ me as a communications advisor, so this pithy pearl of wisdom is on the house — step away from the microphones, Cardinal Sean Brady.
Last making headlines when it was revealed that he had sworn two victims of the serial paedophile, Brendan Smyth, to secrecy during a Church investigation, the Cardinal has been in the news in recent days fronting the Church’s campaign against abortion legislation.
Apparently, Cardinal Brady has reinvented himself as a child advocate. There’s just one caveat. The children have to be unborn before Cardinal Brady will speak on their behalf. Engaged in a media blitz since the heads of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill were published, Cardinal Brady said politicians have an “obligation” and “solemn duty” to oppose the “menacing” legislation.
Victims of Smyth (who was one of the biggest menaces to children in this country), were presumably dumbfounded by Cardinal Brady’s damascene conversion.
While the Cardinal is now demanding politicians defend the rights of children, he was found seriously lacking when he was part of a Church inquiry into Smyth in 1975. Brady was then a 36-year-old canonical lawyer and professor, and he has since described his role as a lowly notary who took notes while two teenage boys recounted their horrific abuse by Smyth.
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