Cardinal Brady Stays in Post, Despite Sex-abuse Allegations

By Gregg Ryan
Church Times
May 11, 2012

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=128346

Under siege: Cardinal Brady faces the media last week PA

THE Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, is resisting calls for his resignation, after revelations that he failed to inform parents of children who were being abused by the late Brendan Smyth, a paedophile priest (News, 19 March; 21 May 2010), after he acted as note-taker at an inquiry in 1975, where a 14-year-old boy gave evidence.

At the time, Dr Brady was work­ing in the diocese of Kilmore, and already held a doctorate in Canon Law. His Bishop, the late Dr Francis McKiernan, asked him to be part of a three-member canonical inquiry into the allegations against Fr Smyth, a priest of the Norbertine order.

The boy, Brendan Boland, gave the names and addresses of five other children who were also being abused by Smyth, but their parents were never told. As a result, some of them were continually abused for a further 15 years.

On Wednesday of last week, a BBC Northern Ireland documen­tary, This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church, was aired, giving details of Cardinal Brady’s failure to alert the children’s parents. His response was that he was merely the note-taker, and that even Dr McKiernan had limited control over Smyth, whose Abbot at the time had full jurisdiction. He said that he was devastated on learning that Smyth had continued to abuse the named children for further years.

“I never doubted that it wouldn’t be followed through. I was so sure there would be effective action,” he said.

The Primate is refusing calls for him to stand down, and has the backing of the Vatican. He is sup­ported by the Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr Charles Scicluna, who said that the then Fr Brady had acted promptly and with deter­mination to ensure that the allegations were believed and acted on by his superiors.

Of the evidence he heard in 1975, which was corroborated by another survivor whom he interviewed, Cardinal Brady said: “I took on board what he said, and I did what I thought was most effective in stopping this terrible abuse by re­ferring it to the man who had the power to curb the movements of Brendan Smyth, namely, the Abbot of Kilnacrott.”

The extent of Smyth’s abuse of children became known in 1994, when he was convicted in Belfast on 17 counts of sexual abuse of four members of one family. In 1997, he entered a guilty plea to a further 74 counts of child sexual abuse in the Central Criminal Court of Dublin, where he was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment. He died in prison, a month into his sentence, and was buried at Kilnacrott in the middle of the night.

It is expected that Cardinal Brady, who is 73, will soon receive the assistance of a co-adjutor bishop in Armagh, who will have automatic rights to succeed him when he submits his resignation to Rome, as he is obliged to do, in two years’ time.