THE CATHOLIC Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has said he
cannot accept a situation “that no one need assume accountability”
following findings of the Murphy report and “in the face of the terrible
damage that was done to children in the church of Christ in Dublin and
in the face of how that damage was addressed”.
When the report was
published in November 2009, “the responses seemed to be saying that it
was all due to others or at most it was due to some sort of systems
fault in the diocesan administration”, he said.
“Within days of
the first ritualistic expressions of regret” at what the report revealed
“people were quickly encountering a ‘church of silence’. No one was
accountable.”
There were “even those who claimed that I should
challenge Judge Murphy herself and the quality of her report. No report
can ever be without its defects, but in its essence the Murphy report
illustrated a reality which can only be described as horrendous.”
All he did at the time, “it was said, was to recognise the failures of priests and bishops”.
Speaking
at a conference in Marquette University, Milwaukee, in the US on
Monday, Dr Martin said that “in the face of the disastrous situation
revealed in the Murphy report” the minimum he expected was that “there
would have been recognition that the decisions taken were the wrong ones
and that they should be recognised as having been wrong”.
During
the Murphy commission investigation he could not speak about what was
emerging and “was left in an invidious situation.
Priests were
suspicious of me, feeling that I was allowing uncontrolled access to
their personal information.
“In fact, the commission required
discovery only of documents regarding individual priests who had been
the subject of allegation or suspicion. There was no generalised handing
over of documents.”
Since the Murphy report, the archdiocese had
received “more and more complaints especially about a number of serial
paedophiles who had been ministering in the diocese over a long period
of time”.
It was “generally accepted that the number of children
who were abused must run into thousands, possibly by about 10 priests
who were clearly serial paedophiles”, he said.