New Irish Envoy: Pope Consistent on Stopping Abuse

CBS News
February 19, 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501714_162-57381011/new-irish-envoy-pope-consistent-on-stopping-abuse/

(AP) DUBLIN — The Vatican's new American envoy to Ireland says Pope Benedict XVI has been "relentless and consistent" in seeking to oust child abusers from the priesthood worldwide.

Archbishop Charles Brown spoke Sunday at his first public Mass following his arrival in Ireland, a traditionally Catholic land rattled by nearly two decades of pedophile-priest scandals.

The 52-year-old Brown, a Manhattan native, has never been a Vatican diplomat before.

He spent a decade working alongside today's pope inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That powerful Vatican body enforces church policies, including the removal of pedophiles from the priesthood.

Ireland accuses the Vatican of undermining several state-ordered probes into the church's cover-up of abuse crimes.