The Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has said the Catholic
Church grew self-centred and arrogant in the wake of the clerical child
abuse scandals and claimed the cover-up of paedophile priests was a
symptom of a deeper malaise in the church.
Saying the church was
“called to renewal”, Archbishop Martin declared it had allowed itself to
drift into a role in Ireland that was beyond legitimate.
Archbishop
Martin made his remarks during mass at the Church of the Assumption in
Ballyfermot, the former parish of ex-priest Tony Walsh who was jailed
last week for sexually abusing three boys.
They also came a day
after the WikiLeaks revelations that the Vatican was offended by
requests for information from the Murphy Commission into clerical sex
abuse.
Archbishop Martin told parishioners in Ballyfermot, where
he grew up, that he had come to renew his apologies for the church’s
hushing up Walsh’s horrendous catalogue of abuse during the 1970s and
1980s.
“I apologise unreservedly,” he said. “As I look back, I see
more clearly that the catastrophic manner in which the abuse was dealt
with was a symptom of a deeper malaise within the Irish church.”
The
church had drifted into a position where “its role in society had grown
beyond what is legitimate”, he said.
“It acted as a world apart,” he
told mass-goers.
“It had often become self-centred and arrogant.
It felt that it could be forgiving of abusers in a simplistic manner and
rarely empathised with the hurt of children.”
Archbishop Martin
said the church had to honestly acknowledge “with no buts and no
conditionality” the gravity and the extent of what happened as it takes a
first step on the road to renewal.
Walsh, 57, who was named in
last year’s Murphy Report on clerical child abuse in the Dublin diocese,
was sentenced last Monday to 16 years, with four suspended, for abusing
three boys.
The now defrocked priest, known as Fr Filth and the Singing Priest for his Elvis impersonations at talent shows, was previously jailed for sexually abusing six other boys.
Over
the weekend, the latest US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks
claimed Vatican officials were offended by requests for information from
the Murphy Commission.
The diplomatic missives claim that some in
the Catholic church hierarchy believed the Government “failed to
respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations”.
They
also suggest requests from the child abuse inquiry for information
relating to the sexual and physical abuse by clergy had “offended many
in the Vatican”.
According to the deputy to the Irish ambassador
to the Holy See, the Irish government gave in to Vatican pressure and
granted church officials immunity in exchange for testifying, a US
diplomat wrote in one of the cables.
Ambassador Noel Fahey apparently told US diplomat Julieta Noyes that the sex abuse scandal was a tricky one to manage.
The
Irish government wanted “to be seen as co-operating with the (Murphy)
investigation” because its own education department was implicated, it
was claimed in the leaked cables.
They suggest politicians were reluctant to press Vatican officials to answer the investigators’ queries.
The
cables also claim Vatican officials believed Opposition politicians
were “making political hay” from the scandal by publicly calling on the
Irish government to demand a response from Rome after the report was
published last November.
A Vatican press official statement said
the WikiLeaks cables should be evaluated with “reservations” and
“prudence”, and not be taken as an “expression” of the Holy See.
The Murphy Report identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese.
SIC: IT/IE