IRELAND
Nenagh Guardian
By Gerry Slevin
The Bishop and priests of Killaloe diocese are totally committed to ensuring that as far as humanly possible sexual abuse of young people will never occur in the future.
In a statement delivered to all churches in the diocese at the week-end Masses, signed by Bishop Willie Walsh, by Fr Seamus Gardiner PP Portroe on behalf of the Priests Council and by Fr Pat Malone, CC Killaloe on behalf of the diocesan Child Protection Committee, the bishop and priests of the diocese wrote of sharing with priest colleagues throughout the country ‘a real sense of pain and shame at the most recent report of sexual abuse of young people’.
Sexual abuse of children was a most serious and morally reprehensible crime, irrespective of whom the abuser might be, the statement added. It was all the more serious when the abuser was a person who was in a position of sacred trust.