By Richard Owen
The Times
February 15, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7027691.ece
VATICAN CITY -- Irish bishops this morning began a two day meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in an attempt to defuse the row in Ireland over clerical sex abuse of children, described by the Pope's deputy as a "particularly abominable" phenomenon.
Speaking at a Mass for the 24 Irish bishops before their encounter at the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State and the Vatican number two, said the abuse scandal was "humiliating" and formed a challenge which the Church "must face".
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| Pope Benedict XVI speaks during a meeting with the Irish bishops at the Vatican |
He referred to "trials that stem from the inside the Church that are naturally the hardest and the most humiliating", adding: "But every sort of trial can become the motive for purification and sanctification ... This is the sort of trial that your community is going through".
Four Irish bishops resigned in the wake of last November's Murphy report on sex abuse by clergy and the cover-ups over three decades by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Dublin. However, others have defied calls to to step down, including Monsignor Martin Drennan, the Bishop of Galway, who claimed he had done nothing to endanger the well-being of children.
The Murphy report outlined in detail a "don't ask, don't tell" culture in which Church officials had placed "protection of their own institution above that of vulnerable children in their care" and failed to inform police when abuse was discovered.
The Pope has said he is "disturbed and distressed" by the Murphy report and shares the "outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by Irish people.
The bishops, led by Cardinal Sean Brady, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, are to give a press conference tomorrow after their final session with the Pope.
A pastoral letter from the Pope to the faithful in Ireland on the sex abuse crisis would be issued after he had "digested what the bishops had to say and taken it into account" Vatican sources said.
Before going into today's meetings in the Bologna Hall of the Apostolic Palace, Cardinal Brady said the encounter with the Pope was "one step in a process which will lead to a journey of repentance, renewal and reconciliation". He added that there was "no disunity" over "safeguarding children in Ireland" and he hoped the process of reconciliation "will gain momentum when we get back to Ireland".
Monsignor Joseph Duffy, Bishop of Clogher and spokesman for the bishops, said they would be "be as frank and as open and as candid as is possible" in talking to the Pope.The meetings were not a "formality" or a "cosmetic exercise" and would not "gloss over difficult points".
Bishop Duffy said each bishop would have to "account directly to the Holy Father" for "the failure of all of us for not doing what we were expected to do". He agreed that there had been "tensions" among the bishops over the Murphy report, "but to describe them as 'divisions' is another matter." The issue had been "thrashed out" last week at a retreat at Knock before the trip to Rome.
However "precise questions of resignation" were not on the agenda "because that is not our prerogative," Bishop Duffy said. Instead the Vatican summit would deal with the "enormous injustice and cruelty" to the victims and the Irish faithful.
Asked about demands for Bishop Drennan to step down, Bishop Duffy said this was "a very emotive issue where people's personal integrity is in question. I think any of us, if we were to be totally honest about ourselves, would be indignant initially if anyone questioned our integrity. For that reason we would be entitled to the fullest possible explanation behind any kind of allegation of that kind."
He noted that Monsignor Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, a former Vatican official who has demanded an "honest confrontation" within Ireland over sex abuse issues, had said he expected bishops named in the Murphy report to be "publicly accountable". "But that's not the same as saying he believes they should resign, which unfortunately is the meaning people have taken out of it."
Bishop Duffy admitted the Church had been "slower than it needs to be" in tackling a "culture of concealment", but "a casualty of all this has been the truth. The fullness of the truth must come out, everything must be laid on the table."
John Kelly of the Survivors of Child Abuse group said victims wanted the Pope to "restore the true Church to Ireland" which had been "severely damaged at home and abroad by the atrocities committed". Representatives of the victims have asked Pope Benedict for compensation, and are seeking a meeting with him during his visit to Britain in September.
The Murphy report established that a series of Dublin archbishops had compiled confidential files on over a hundred parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940, but the files remained in private archives and were not acted on.
The Irish bishops will also hold talks with senior Curia officials including Cardinal William Levada of the United States, Pope Benedict's successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which reviews abuse claims against clergy.
Some critics have said the Pope himself, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, must have been aware of the scale of the sex abuse problem while head of doctrine but failed to take action.
Bishop Duffy said the Pope was "very well clued in on this issue. Even before he became Pope he had access to the documentation, and he know exactly what was in the documentation. He wasn't living in a fool's paradise".
While standing in for the ailing Pope John Paul II at Easter in 2005 the then Cardinal Ratzinger denounced "filth" in the Church, a reference to the abuse scandals which first came to light in the United States.
On his papal pilgrimage to the US in 2008 Benedict again condemned clerical sex abuse and met sex abuse victims. However Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, where the US sex abuse scandals first surfaced, was given a sinecure in Rome as Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, said the Church could not tolerate clerical sex abuse and wanted oit dealt with "as a serious crime". The Church would also be "closer to the victims" in future, offering them "sympathy, solidarity and consolation." However he insisted that priests who abused those in their care were a minority, and the majority did good work "which unfortunately does not make news".
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