IRELAND
Catholic News Agency
Armagh, Ireland, May 3, 2012 / 02:29 am (CNA).- Cardinal Sean B. Brady of Armagh, Ireland has denounced a BBC documentary on clerical abuse, saying he does not deserve blame for the results of a decades-old investigation in which he played a subordinate role.
“In the course of the program a number of claims were made which overstate and seriously misrepresent my role in a Church inquiry in 1975,” said Cardinal Brady, in response to a May 1 installment of “This World” entitled “The Shame of the Catholic Church.”
Cardinal Brady, who was not ordained as a bishop until 1995, issued a statement offering several clarifications about his role in the investigation of Norbertine priest Father Brendan Smyth, described in the BBC program.
Parts of the documentary, he said, gave viewers the impression “that because of the office I hold in the Church today I somehow had the power to stop Brendan Smyth in 1975.” But Cardinal Brady, who was not yet a bishop, had “absolutely no authority” over him.
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