Angelqueen.org

[Robert Drobot]

Church sex scandal rocks Ireland
By Angelique Chrisafis, Dublin
October 27, 2005

A DEVASTATING report into one of the world's worst clerical sex abuse scandals has found that children were abused over a 40-year period while the Catholic Church, the police and the Irish state failed to protect them.

At least 21 priests were accused of more than 100 cases of rape and sexual assault against children in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford from 1962 to 2002. The rural area of south-east Ireland is believed to have the highest proportion of accused clergy in a Catholic diocese anywhere in the world.

The report, headed by the retired Supreme Court judge Frank Murphy, is Ireland's first state investigation into the Catholic Church's handling of abuse allegations against priests. It found that the church's negligence in dealing with allegations went as far as the Vatican.

Colm O'Gorman, a victim of child rape by one priest in Wexford, told the Irish state broadcaster: "The report says very clearly that the Vatican carries a responsibility for the rape and abuse of children."

The report is likely to spark anger in Ireland, where the once all-powerful Catholic Church has been hugely damaged by revelations of abuse.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin — whose archdiocese faces its own probe into how Catholic leaders mishandled more than 100 abuse cases — said the church accepted Mr Murphy's findings, which he called "horrific".

"Many people would not have suffered abuse had the people with knowledge about it acted in a timely matter," Archbishop Martin said. He appealed to anybody who had suffered such abuse to speak out if they hadn't already.

The most notorious serial rapist named in the report is Father Sean Fortune, a violent bully who blackmailed his victims into silence.

He came to his first parish, Fethard-on-Sea, in the late-1970s with a background of child sex abuse allegations while at the St Peter's College seminary in Wexford town.

He was allowed to set up local youth groups and invite boys for overnight stays at his house. In the report, 25 complaints were made against him.

Concerned parishioners had organised a delegation to two bishops and written to the Papal Nuncio, the Pope's ambassador in Ireland, but nothing happened.

When complaints were made against Fortune in 1987, the church sent him to London to do a communications course and seek therapy.

On his return, he was made director of media outlet at the National Association of Community Broadcasting, where he was later accused of raping a 15-year-old boy in a studio booth.

In 1999, in the first week of a trial on 29 charges of sexual abuse against eight boys, Fortune, 45, barricaded himself into his small home in County Wexford and committed suicide.

The report found that for 20 years, Bishop Donal Herlihy, who was in charge of the Ferns diocese, treated the sexual abuse of a child as a moral problem and did not recognise it as a serious criminal offence. When complaints were made, he would penalise the priest by transferring him to a different job for a period before returning him to his old position.

He also ordained "clearly unsuitable men into the priesthood" when he knew or ought to have known they might abuse children.

Irish police were blamed for not keeping records of informal complaints of abuse, including an allegation that 10 girls were sexually assaulted by a priest at the altar in the parish church of Monageer. The current Bishop of Ferns, Eamonn Walsh, apologised unreservedly for the horrific abuse people in the diocese had suffered.

GUARDIAN, AP

[And now...]

[Robert Drobot]

[totustuusmaria]

I'm of two opinions concerning this.

At one level I'm outraged and enraged that priests and bishops would do such a thing.

At another (and stronger) level, I'm just like: "old news." I'm terribly cynical about it. "Well, of course the bishops didn't do anything about it. They want to protect their hide, not loose their priests, perhaps don't have the faith, and maybe are homosexuals."

I shouldn't be indifferent, but I'm numb.
_________________
Qui illud ex fide comedit, Ignem comedit et Spiritum

[Bellarmine2005]

It is sad to see the "New Springtime" of Vatican II destroying this once Catholic country. St. Patrick, pray for Ireland and the conversion of the horrible clergy who infect the church in Ireland and throughout the world. I look forward to the day when the disease that is the Novus Ordo is purged from Holy Mother Church.
_________________
St. Robert, increase love for the truth in the erring.

[AskStPhilomena]

[ExsulFiliusHevae]

[Robert Drobot]