THE Catholic Church have been rocked by a series of abuse scandals over the last decade.Religious leaders were accused of covering up and “turning a blind eye” to allegations of child abuse made against priests.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien first apologised for the scandal in 2002.
And he reiterated the Church’s position in 2010 when he said the actions of those who failed to report the crimes “brings shame on us all”.
The cardinal claimed Catholics were “demoralised and confused” by the “many evils” perpetrated by paedophile priests.
He added: “We can take no comfort from the fact that only a small percentage of priests committed such crimes. The impact of their sinful acts is very large. Their actions harmed the lives of their victims, caused great hatred to be directed at their innocent brother priests and left ordinary Catholics demoralised and confused.”
Hundreds of abuse victims have come forward in Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States in the last 10 years .
Pope Benedict XVI – who was accused of failing to act over complaints about American priest Father Lawrence Murphy during the 1990s – sent a letter to Ireland to apologise after 16 years of clerical cover-ups.
Two recent reports into allegations of paedophilia among Irish clergy revealed the shocking extent of abuse, cover-ups and hierarchical failings involving thousands of victims and stretching back decades.
In one case, four Dublin archbishops were found to have effectively turned a blind eye to cases of abuse from 1975 to 2004.
Another report, which was the result of a nine-year investigation, documented some six decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse at residential institutions run by 18 religious orders.
Pope Benedict has since appointed a panel of nine prelates to investigate child abuse in Ireland’s Catholic institutions.