Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Admit blame: Bertone tells Irish bishops

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has told Irish bishops at an extraordinary summit with Pope Benedict that they must admit their own blame in cover-ups of generations of sex abuse of minors, or risk losing the faith of Catholics.

Cardinal Bertone, delivered a stinging homily at a Mass before the talks decrying the “particularly abhorrent deeds” of some in the Irish church hierarchy, although he didn’t name any names, AP reports.

Bertone, who participated in the summit with 24 bishops from Irish dioceses, likened the crisis to a “most dangerous storm, that which touches the heart of believers, shaking their faith and threatening their ability to trust in God.”

To restore faith, “sinners must acknowledge their own blame in the fullness of truth,” urged Bertone, the Holy See’s secretary of state. He worried that the evil could push faithful toward “discouragement and desperation.”

The summit follows last year’s Irish government report that found that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics pretended not to see. A separate inquiry documented decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse or children and teens in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages.

The delegation’s top member, Cardinal Sean Brady, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, described the talks as a first step on a journey toward “penitence, renewal and reconciliation.”

Bertone called for “humility” from the bishops. But Clogher Bishop Joseph Duffy had already said resignations were not on summit agenda, defying victims’ demands that clerics who involved in protecting pedophile priests step down.

That made Andrew Madden, who in 1995 became the first in Ireland to go public with an abuse lawsuit against the church, pessimistic.

“It’s clear that most of Ireland’s bishops should go, because they conspired in covering up heinous crimes,” Madden told The Associated Press in Ireland. “Most of them will cling to their positions regardless of the anguish this causes the victims.”
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