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	The Vatican Wakes up UTV March 26, 2010 http://www.u.tv/News/The-Vatican-wakes-up/3b562460-c5e9-43d7-b39e-6ce798fc7dc3 Madeleine Bunting: The wave of child abuse allegations has forced the Vatican, finally, to respond, apologise and investigate The last few weeks have been an astonishing period in the history of the Vatican. Usually the institution likes to claim that it thinks in centuries. It has taken pride in its stubborn refusal to march to the tempo of daily news headlines. But all that is changing. The papal spokesman, Federico Lombardi, has been rarely out of the news. He has been fighting on a near daily basis to defend the pope's reputation from allegations which have come closer and closer to drawing the papacy and Pope Benedict himself directly into the fast-spreading child abuse scandal. Suddenly, the Vatican is discovering that in the age of the internet, it cannot afford to offer disdainful contempt for stories which challenge its authority. The New York Times story prompted a detailed defence of the pope's role in refusing to authorise in 1996 a canonical trial for Fr Lawrence Murphy who was suspected of abusing up to 200 boys during his time at a deaf school in the diocese of Milwaukee. The case bears all the hallmarks of that curious leniency – legitimised as Christian forgiveness – towards abusing priests when they used the Catholic language of repentence. This comes quickly after an unprecedented apology to Irish Catholics last weekend in which the pope said he was "truly sorry" for the abuse scandals. This gesture might seem a small thing but it has been reluctantly and belatedly given. The abuse scandal emerged in Ireland in the early 90s and it brought down a Dublin government in 1994. Three bishops have resigned for their roles in covering up abuse. The Vatican has tried to keep itself apart from the mess – tried to treat Ireland as a little "local difficulty" – and contain the conflagration. The last months has seen that strategy spiral out of control as abuse scandals have spread across the continent. Finally, the pope has been forced to say the bleeding obvious – sorry. But don't underestimate the significance of this apology. Papal authority has become a key characteristic of modern Catholicism. A combination of the late-19th-century invention of infallibility and the John Paul II's popularisation of the office for mass communications has ensured the centrality of the papacy to the credibility and authority of the institution. An apology is a recognition of failure, of inadequacy and powerlessness which sits in sharp contrast to everything the papacy has claimed over the last century. There is a crisis of authority at every level of the Catholic church; Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the church in Ireland, has said he is reflecting on his position this Easter and will announce a decision about whether to resign on 23 May. Many are speculating that he cannot survive the scandal of swearing two victims of the priest Brendan Smyth to secrecy. Even his profouse apologies have failed to soften public opinion in Ireland. The Vatican's investigation into the Irish church, due to begin shortly, could begin by asking for him to go. The Vatican's recent actions are those of an institution struggling to give the appearance of putting its house in order. On Wednesday, the pope finally accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee – after a year's delay despite detailed evidence that he mishandled sexual abuse allegations. Magee had been personal secretary to three popes. Allegations against the pope's brother in Germany, the revelations from the US and Magee: they all demonstrate how the crisis now directly threatens the prestige and authority of the Vatican. It's hard to believe there won't be more revelations; thousands of allegations of clerical sex abuse are likely to have been handled by the Vatican. Most observers maintain that abuse allegations in the church have always prompted more – the domino effect. It's a fair bet that the Vatican officials are trawling the records to see what scandal could pop up next. Inevitably, people ask dramatic questions such as can the pope survive, can the Catholic church survive? No pope has resigned for centuries. The pope is likely to stagger on, the prestige of his office much battered. More importantly, the church is seeing a dramatic hollowing out of its heartlands. Europe is abandoning its Catholic heritage at unprecedented speed – just a few decades – after centuries of observance. But across Africa and Asia, Catholicism continues to gather new adherents and new resolve. Just as in the past, this institution is likely to show resilience and an ability to reshape itself to a new global reality: a church of the developing world with its headquarters – for historical reasons – still in Europe.
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