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	Irish Say Cardinal Should Go Straits Times June 14, 2010 http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_540099.html OVER three-quarters of Irish people say the head of the country's Roman Catholic Church should quit over claims he sought to cover up a case of a serial clerical child sex abuser, a poll said Monday. Cardinal Sean Brady has faced calls to resign after it emerged that, as a 35-year-old priest in 1975, he met two children abused by a notorious serial paedophile clergyman, Father Brendan Smyth. The children were required by Cardinal Brady to sign an oath of silence about their abuse and to agree to talk to no one about their interviews except authorised clergy. The police were not informed and Smyth went on to abuse children in Ireland, Scotland and the United States before he was finally convicted 20 years later and jailed for a catalogue of sexual offences. Cardinal Brady said last month he would not step down as he wanted to 'help sow the seeds for a genuine healing and renewal in the Church.' But the Ipsos/MRBI poll for The Irish Times found 76 per cent believed Cardinal Brady should resign, 15 per cent believed he should not and nine percent had no opinion. The poll also found over four out of five people believe the Church has failed to respond adequately to a watershed report last November that revealed the extent of the abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, the country's biggest. Mainly Catholic Ireland was shocked by the hard-hitting report from judge Yvonne Murphy that found four archbishops had effectively turned a blind eye to cases of abuse for 30 years. One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years. When questioned about the Church's response to the Murphy report, 83 per cent of people around the country and 87 per cent of those in Dublin believed the response was inadequate. This represents a dramatic hardening of perceptions since a poll last January when 16 per cent thought the Church had responded adequately and 74 per cent felt it had not. The pollsters questioned 1,000 people face-to-face across the country last Tuesday and Wednesday. -- AFP
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