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	Catholic Bishops Holding Summit on Child Protection The Irish Times January 23, 2009 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0123/breaking6.htm Catholic bishops will today gather to discuss child protection as the crisis deepens after the report on child protection practices in the Cloyne diocese. The hierarchy from both sides of the Border have been summoned to the meeting at Maynooth, Co Kildare, in the wake of the fall-out over allegations in the Diocese of Cloyne, Co Cork. A spokesman for the Catholic Church said the talks at St Patrick’s College seminary would deal with child welfare within the Church. “It’s a special meeting, addressing the safeguarding of children, obviously in the context of recent developments,” he said. “This is a core pastoral area for individual bishops and collectively.” Today’s meeting in Maynooth follows publication on December 19th last of a report on child protection practices in the Cloyne diocese by the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) in the Catholic Church in Ireland. It found such practices in Cloyne to be “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”. It also found Bishop Magee had a written policy of supplying “minimal” information to the civil authorities on clerical child sex abuse allegations and that, in two instances, he did not report allegations immediately, as required by church and State guidelines. Bishop Magee, a former Vatican aide, has faced down repeated calls to quit over his mishandling of the allegations. Earlier this month, Catholic Primate Cardinal Sean Brady said Bishop Magee should not resign but should stay on to help implement recommendations in the official investigations. The controversy prompted the Government to widen the Dublin Commission of Investigation, into clerical sex abuse allegations in the capital, to cover the Diocese of Cloyne. That investigation will focus on claims by a priest in December 2004 who claimed he had been abused as a young boy by an unnamed cleric in the Diocese of Cloyne, referred to as Father A. It will also examine several complaints made against a second priest, Father B, accused of molesting two teenage girls, abusing a 14-year-old boy and of having a year-long sexual relationship with the boy’s mother.
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