Daily Mail
March 16, 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258287/Irish-Catholic-leader-Sean-Brady-stands-firm-silence-vow.html
IRELAND -- The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has said he will only resign if asked by the Pope amid allegations he witnessed teenage abuse victims take vows of silence over a paedophile.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, admitted that he attended meetings in 1975 when two teenage boys signed oaths of silence while testifying in a Church inquiry against Father Brendan Smyth.
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| Staying put: Cardinal Sean Brady has said he acted promptly against Father Brendan Smyth |
The priest was later uncovered as the most notorious child abuser in the Irish Catholic Church, carrying out more than 90 sexual assaults against 40 youngsters in a 20-year period.
Survivors' groups say the revelations show the cardinal colluded in the cover up of Smyth's crimes – which, they say, allowed the cleric to continue offending - and say he must quit immediately.
Cardinal Brady has refused to go, however, because he said he acted promptly against Smyth but did not have the authority to turn him into the Gardai.
Dr Brady claimed that wider society handled child abuse cases differently in the 1970s.
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| 'Heinous crime': Paedophile priest Brendan Smyth leaves Limavady Courthouse in 1997 |
'There was a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy, that's the way society dealt with it.'
Pressed on the calls for his resignation, he added: 'I will only resign if asked by the Holy Father.'
Asked if he had reconsidered resigning as a result of criticisms made since his initial refusal to step down yesterday, he said: 'Certainly not. I have heard other calls for me to stay. I have been very heartened by those calls, calls of support, to stay and to continue the work of addressing this most difficult problem.
'There are lots of calls here in Armagh, where I serve, in the form of phone calls and emails from priests and people around the country.'
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| Reputation: Pope Benedict XVI is known as a prelate who is tough on clerical child abusers |
The latest scandal to convulse the Catholic Church comes as allegations emerging in Germany have forced the Vatican to forcefully defend the record of Pope Benedict XVI over his handling of a paedophile priest in the 1980s.
The allegations against Cardinal Brady threaten to bring down the leadership of the Irish Catholic Church in Ireland just months after the devastating Murphy Report into child abuse shamed four bishops who protected the Church by covering up child abuse by priests over four decades.
The scandal resulted in the Pope summoning the Irish bishops to Rome for a meeting in which he denounced the abuse of children as a 'heinous crime'.
Maeve Lewis, of support group One in Four, said: 'This latest disclosure removes Cardinal Brady's credibility to provide the leadership that is so vital at this time, leaving him no option but to resign.'
Abuse campaigner Colm O'Gorman said Cardinal Brady 'is now deeply personally implicated in the gross failures of the Catholic Church in the management of Smyth and his rampant sexual offending against children.'
The revelations date to a time when Brady was a priest and a part-time secretary to the then Bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan.
He attended two meetings where the complainants gave their testimonies and signed undertakings, on oath, to respect the confidentiality of the inquiry.
Afterwards, Father Brady passed reports of the meetings to Bishop McKiernan for his 'immediate action'.
Cardinal Brady said yesterday that he would not be resigning because he had done nothing wrong.
'I did act, and act effectively, in that inquiry to produce the grounds for removing Father Smyth from ministry and specifically it was underlined that he was not to hear confessions and that was very important.'
He said the responsibility for Smyth's behaviour as a priest rested with his religious superior in Kilnacrott and not with him.
The Vatican has spent the last week, meanwhile, trying to stop Pope Benedict from being drawn into a scandal involving the alleged abuse of 170 children in Catholic institutions in his own country.
They include the Regensburg choir school that used to employ his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who admitted 'clipping boys around the ear' but denies knowledge of sexual offences.
Former choirboy Thomas Mayer has claimed in Der Spiegel, however, that Monsignor Ratzinger went much further - and would 'throw chairs at students during choir practice' if he was not happy with them.
On Friday the Catholic Church in Germany confirmed that in the 1980s Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich – the future Pope Benedict – had approved therapy for a priest suspected of abuse.
The priest was later transferred to another location, where he was later convicted of abusing minors.
German Catholic authorities have insisted that the transfer was made by Gerhard Gruber, a minor official, without either the authority or knowledge of Archbishop Ratzinger.
On Saturday the Pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, denounced attempts to unfairly embroil the Pontiff in scandal.
He said: 'It's rather clear that in the last days there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses.
'For any objective observer, it's clear that these efforts have failed.'
Pope Benedict has long enjoyed a reputation as a prelate who is tough on clerical child abusers, once describing such priests as the 'filth' of the Church.
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