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	Diarmuid Martin: Those Who Acted Wrongly Should Assume Accountability The Post July 17, 2011 http://www.thepost.ie/breakingnews/ireland/ojkfmhausney/ The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin is using his homily at Mass in St Mary's Pro Cathedral this morning, to reflect on the Cloyne report. The 400-page document - which was published on Wednesday - highlighted that the handling of allegations of clerical sex abuse against children in the Cork Diocese was "inadequate and inappropriate". Diarmuid Martin is saying this morning that, while he believes the Catholic Church is a much safer place today than it was before, it has still not learned lessons from previous mistakes. He goes on to urge both priests and lay people who commit themselves to implementing child protection policies not to become frustrated or indifferent. Archbishop Martin also says those who have done nothing wrong should not be made scapegoats or objects of hate, and he appeals to those people not to give in to cynicism or become demoralised. He also says that those in the institutions of Church or State who had acted wrongly or inadequately should assume accountability. Full text of Archbishop Diarmaid Martin's homily: "Only a few months ago, here in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral, we celebrated a liturgy of lament and repentance reflecting on the shattering facts regarding the wide-ranging abuse of children by priests and religious in this diocese and about the manner in which the Church in this diocese responded to that abuse. "It was for me a moment of hope. The liturgy had been prepared by survivors of abuse and survivors took part in the carrying out of the liturgy. Courageously, men and women who had been abused spoke out about their hurt and their hopes. It was a moment which I know brought healing to many and gave them renewed strength in themselves and some sense of renewed hope in the Church which had not believed them or had even betrayed them. At that liturgy I saw many faces that I knew in tears; I watched others whose names I will never know sit alone in silence and sadness. "My first thoughts on reading the Cloyne report went back to that liturgy and to those who organized it and took part in it. I asked myself: what are they thinking today? Are they asking themselves if that entire liturgy was just an empty show? Were they being used just to boost the image of the Church? Were their renewed hopes just another illusion about a Church which seems unable to reform itself? Was their hurt just being further compounded? "As I reflected, the first emotion that came to me was one of anger: • anger at what had happened in the diocese of Cloyne and at response – or non-response - that was made to children whose lives had been ruptured by abuse; • anger at the fact that children had been put at risk well after agreed guidelines were in place which were approved by all the Irish bishops; • anger at how thousands of men and women in this diocese of Dublin must feel, who have invested time and training to ensure that the Church they love and hope can be different would truly be a safe place for children; • anger at the fact that there were in Cloyne - and perhaps elsewhere - individuals who placed their own views above the safeguarding of children, and seemingly without any second thought placed themselves outside and above the regime of safeguarding to which their diocese and the Irish bishops had committed themselves. "Paradoxically, appealing somehow to their own interpretation of Canon Law they had put themselves even above and beyond the norms which the current Pope himself has promulgated for the entire Church.
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