The Catholic Church has been left in a damaged position on Christmas Eve by the Cloyne child protection scandal, Bishop Willie Walsh has admitted.He was speaking as the fallout over the failure to adequately deal with child sex abuse claims in Cloyne continued today.
In response to questions on RTÉ radio the Bishop of Killaloe, said the Bishop of Cloyne John Magee would have to “consider his situation” today, although he refused to call for him to resign.
Bishop Walsh said: “It is a very difficult position for the church to find itself in on Christmas Eve.”
But he added that the Diocese of Cloyne had since implemented many of the recommendations of the report by the Church’s child protection watchdog.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin also added his voice to the situation and said Bishop Magee needed to issue a “transparent” statement on why child sex abuse claims were mishandled, and he called for the Bishop to “reflect” on his position.
“I think there’s a need for a very comprehensive and transparent statement from the Bishop in relation to his perspective on this and the diocese’s perspective. And we haven’t got that yet,” he said.
However last night, the Cloyne Director of Communication, Fr Jim Killeen said there would be no statement on the matter from Bishop Magee. He said the Bishop was expected to carry out his Christmas duties, including midnight Mass tonight in Cobh, but these plans had not been finalised.
Fr Killeen could not be contacted today.
Meanwhile, a HSE probe into all dioceses found that Cloyne was the only one without adequate child protection procedures.
Cloyne was the only diocese to “raise a red flag” in the HSE audit, due to be published next month.
Last week’s report by the Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) found that abuse allegations within the diocese had been mishandled in a manner that put children at further risk.
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(Source: BN)