NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter
Published on Thursday 3 May 2012
THE BBC report this week into the role of Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in the 1975 investigation into paedophile priest Brendan Smith was profoundly disturbing, but should not come as a surprise.
In 2009 an independent report into child abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin concluded: “The Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state”.
This, indeed, has been the pattern right across the world: in the USA, in Germany, in France, in Austria: wherever allegations of abuse have surfaced against priests the first instinct was to protect the church from scandal, and not young children from harm.
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