Monday, March 15, 2010

Brady under pressure to resign over Smyth claims

THE future of Cardinal Seán Brady as head of the Irish Catholic Church is in doubt amid mounting calls for his resignation after allegations that he was involved in a cover-up of abuse by notorious paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

However, Cardinal Brady has indicated he has no intention of resigning despite an admission that he attended two meetings in 1975 at which two victims of the deceased priest were forced to sign an oath of silence about the alleged abuse.

The cardinal said he believed the account of the victims and had passed on the information about the abuse to his immediate superior.

He also pointed out that there were no guidelines for dealing with such investigations at that time and the responsibility for Fr Smyth rested with his religious order.

As a 36-year-old part- time diocesan secretary to the then Bishop of Kilmore – the late Bishop Francis McKiernan – the cardinal said he had taken notes at meetings held in Dundalk, Co Louth and Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan.

In a statement, the cardinal said the complainants had signed undertakings "to respect the confidentiality of the information-gathering process".

"As instructed, and as a matter of urgency, Fr Brady passed both reports to Bishop McKiernan for his immediate action," the statement read.

The cardinal acted as "a recording secretary" at the first meeting in the Dominican Friary in Dundalk and he asked the questions and recorded the answers at the second meeting at the home of Smyth’s Norbertine order at Kilnacrott, Co Cavan, which is in the Diocese of Kilmore.

A spokesman for Cardinal Brady last night reiterated that he had "no position of authority re the management of (abuse) cases" when he attended the meeting with Fr Smyth’s victims.

However, following the latest controversy to rock the Irish Catholic Church, abuse survivor and former head of victim support group One in Four Colm O’Gorman called on Cardinal Brady to resign.

Mr O’Gorman said the cardinal’s position was "impossible" and no longer tenable based on the information about his meeting with victims of Fr Smyth. He believed Cardinal Brady should have immediately reported the alleged abuse by the paedophile priest to police in 1975, regardless of the views of his superiors.

Mr O’Gorman described as "obscene" the revelation that the victims were forced to sign an oath of secrecy by such senior clergy.

"Those children were horrifically abused by Brendan Smyth.

"They were then abused by the Church process that Seán Brady and others subjected them to."

The One in Four founder said it was unthinkable that the cardinal had done nothing in the intervening years to report Fr Smyth to the civil authorities as Smyth had continued to abuse children up to the early 1990s.

One in Four executive director Maeve Lewis described the revelations about Cardinal Brady as "another shocking episode in the saga of clerical sex abuse".

She claimed the cardinal had no option but to resign as he no longer had any credibility to speak about accountability for failing to safeguard children.

Another abuse victim Andrew Madden joined calls for Cardinal Brady’s resignation and criticised Government silence on the issue.

Pressure on Cardinal Brady to resign also intensified after comments he made in the aftermath of the publication last November of the Murphy report into clerical sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

"If I found myself in the situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then I think I would resign," Cardinal Brady said then.

Details of the latest Church scandal emerged as Cardinal Brady has been named as a defendant in a forthcoming High Court action being taken by a female victim of Fr Smyth.

Fr Smyth was convicted on sex abuse charges in Belfast in 1994.

Delays in his extradition led to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil- Labour coalition government the same year.
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