UNITED KINGDOM
The Observer
Catherine Deveney
The Observer, Saturday 6 April 2013
March 13, 2013. The world is waiting. Television screens show days-old footage of cardinals in red and white, processing past Vatican guards into the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave. Every image, from the polished marble floors and gold ceilings to the priceless frescoes on the walls, tells a story of wealth, pageantry and power. Outside, in St Peter’s Square, the crowds are cheering for a man whose name they do not yet know. But there is another soundtrack. The day before, Pat McEwan, a 62-year-old from Scotland, had described to me how he was raped at the age of eight by a priest. His voice drowns out crowds and choirs. “I ran home shaking like a dog. I had wee short trousers on and the shite was running down my leg. My mum and my auntie had to wipe me down.”
The juxtaposition of those two images: the powerful institution that represents 1.2 billion Catholics and the abused child, tells the story of a church with two faces: one public and one private. Last month, the church was plunged into crisis when the Observer revealed that three priests and one ex-priest had complained to the Papal Nuncio about Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The cardinal, who publicly decried homosexuals as degenerate, had, they said, privately been making advances to his own priests for years. But the story was never about one man. It wasn’t about personal weakness. Keith O’Brien was merely a symptom of a wider sickness: an institution that chooses cover-up as its default position to conceal moral, sexual and financial scandal.
This was not paedophilia but it was an abuse of power – a man in authority acting inappropriately to young seminarians and priests under his control. It was made clear that a full sexual relationship had been involved. Yet there were attempts to cloud his behaviour in moral ambiguity. First, there was denial. The cardinal “contested” the allegations. A day after publication, he resigned. The next week, he issued a statement admitting his sexual conduct “as a priest, a bishop and a cardinal” had fallen short. Many ignored what that confirmed about the extent and duration of his behaviour: he was made cardinal in 2003.
Next, came obfuscation, with the church claiming it did not know the substance of the allegations, despite being given written notice before publication. Then, anger and the minimising of wrongdoing – the cardinal had been destroyed for mere “drunken fumblings” from 30 years ago. Why, he had probably been to confession and received absolution. But most revealing of all was the attempt to turn the spotlight on the complainants’ motivation, to blame the accusers rather than the accused. It has been a familiar pattern in Catholic abuse cases over the years.
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