Irish Cleric Faces Mounting Pressure to Quit, Press TV, March 16, 2010

Irish Cleric Faces Mounting Pressure to Quit

Press TV
March 16, 2010

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120944§ionid=3510212

IRELAND -- The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland is facing further pressure to step down after admitting he knew about the sexual abuse of two children.

Cardinal Sean Brady said he was present at meetings in 1975 where two abused children, aged 10 and 14, were forced to sign vows of secrecy.

He failed, however, to inform the authorities of the crimes committed by the notorious pedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.

Smyth is said to have abused at least 20 children over a 40 year period in the North and South of Ireland.

Cardinal Sean Brady is accused of reckless endangerment by retaining silence about the sex abuse cases.

He eventually died in prison after being convicted for more than 90 offenses, many of them committed after the Brady meetings.

Now Brady, accused of reckless endangerment, is facing increasing demands to resign.

"Cardinal Brady is personally implicated in collusion with clerical child sexual abuse," Fiona Neary, director of the Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) said Tuesday.

Underlining that Brady, by maintaining silence, allowed Smyth to continue abusing children, she added that the top cleric's position is now "untenable."

Meanwhile on Monday, a sex abuse victim also called on the cardinal to resign.

Samantha, who was abused by Father Smyth while she was at boarding school from 1974 to 1979, told the BBC that the church needs to "root out the rot and start from the top."

Northern Ireland's Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister and Sinn Fein Member of the Legislative Assembly Sue Ramsey have also said that Cardinal Brady should consider stepping down.

Brady has so far rejected calls for his resignation, insisting that he had only been following church orders and that his presence at the meetings was not a "resigning matter."

The top churchman also defended his role in the 1975 investigation, stating that his actions were part of a process that removed Smyth's license to act as a priest.

Pope Benedict plans to issue a pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics about the scandal.

During recent months, the Vatican has been hit by a series of damaging scandals over allegations of child molestation and physical abuse across European Catholic institutions.

So far, hundreds of victims in Ireland, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands have filed complaints that they suffered abuse as students during the '70s up to 1980.