Vatican Insider
December 1, 2011
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/10426/
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| The Raphoe’s Bishop, Philip Boyce |
Reports on six Irish Catholic dioceses, released today (November 30), reveal further allegations of abuse of children by priests in Ireland – particularly in the northern dioceses of Raphoe and Derry, and serious errors of judgment by bishops in handling these cases over the past 35 years.
On a more positive note, however, the six reports confirm that whereas in past decades these dioceses were often more concerned to protect the Catholic Church’s image and safeguard its priests from prosecution rather than care for the child victims of abuse, today these same dioceses have good, solid procedures in place to protect children.
The reports – part of a nation wide audit on child protection measures - were released by The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, which was set up by the Church in 2007. They deal with the archdiocese of Tuam and the dioceses of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Derry, Dromore, Kilmore and Raphoe.
The Bishops of these dioceses had invited the agency to examine the past practice and present procedures in their respective dioceses. They also made documentation regarding past allegations of abuse allegations available to the investigators, but the reports - now available on the internet - do not go into graphic details on these abuses in the way earlier judicial reports have done.
While the reports offer important and badly needed confirmation that the Catholic Church in Ireland is now on the right track, they nevertheless also provide further disturbing evidence that bishops in past decades sought to protect priest abusers and the Church’s good name, and did not place the protection of children as their priority concern.
This was especially evident in the diocese of Raphoe, which covers most of county Donegal in the north of the island. There, the report reveals, 52 allegations of abuse by 14 priests were made to police between January 1975 and August 2010. Eight of the 14 are now out of the ministry, while four were convicted of an offence against a child.
"It is clear that significant errors of judgment were made by successive bishops when responding to child abuse allegations that emerged within this diocese," the Raphoe report states.
It added that “too much emphasis was placed on the situation of the accused priest”, and “too little on the needs of their complainants”, while greater attention should have been given “to ensuring that preventative actions were taken quickly when concerns came to light".
According to the Raphoe Report, abuse cases were only referred to the Vatican if the priest faced criminal prosecution or if the diocese wanted him removed from the priesthood.
Raphoe’s Bishop, Philip Boyce, issued a personal statement after the report’s release, in which he admitted that “there were very poor judgments and mistakes made” over past decades, when there were “horrific acts of abuse of children by individual priests, that should never have happened, and if suspected should have been dealt with immediately in the appropriate manner.”
He confessed that “insufficient emphasis was placed on the needs of victims, often in the misguided attempt to protect the reputation of the Church” and “there were frequent cases of delays or non-reporting of allegations and complaints about child sexual abuse.”
He apologizing for these grave failures saying, “We are truly sorry for the terrible deeds that have been inflicted on so many by a small minority of priests. We offer our humble apologies once more and seek their forgiveness for the dreadful harm that has been done to them, their families and friends”.
Likewise, Bishop Seamus Hegarty who recently retired as bishop of the diocese of Derry due to ill-health, and who was formerly bishop of Raphoe, expressed his personal sorrow at “the deficits” in his personal management of allegations of abuses in the past. “I know my practice in the past was sometimes poor”, he confessed, and expressed his sorrow to those who were hurt as a result.
The Report on the Derry diocese reveals that 31 allegations of abuse were made against 23 priests (16 now dead), and asserts that even in situations where there were “clear concerns”, the priests “were not robustly challenged or adequately managed” and problems were often dealt with by transferring them elsewhere.
Ian Elliott, the Chief Executive of the Church’s child protection agency, who is a member of the Church of Ireland and not a Catholic, revealed that since 1975 all six dioceses, to a greater or lesser extent, had protected abuser priests from prosecution.
But in recent years, he said, the situation has changed as the bishops began to inform the police and the health authorities in Ireland in a prompt and comprehensive way.
Nevertheless, he said, his agency discovered that in many cases the bishops were still not informing the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of every case of abuse, as they were obliged to do since 2001.
For their part, the bishops of five dioceses, and the administrator of the sixth (Derry), welcomed the reports’ conclusions. Each acknowledged past failures, and asked pardon of the victims for their failures to adequately protect children.
With the release of reports on these six dioceses, and the earlier publication of judicial Reports on the archdiocese of Dublin and the dioceses of Cloyne and Ferns, a total of 9 out of the 26 Irish dioceses have now been scrutinized.
Ian Elliot hopes that within the next two years his agency will have been able to complete its review of all the Irish dioceses, religious houses and other Catholic Institutions, and be able to present a true picture of the situation to the Catholic Church and the people of Ireland.
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