The Irish Catholic Church is undergoing a period of cleansing as a result of revelations about clerical abuse and that will bring about a more humble form of Christianity in Ireland, Cardinal Cahal Daly has said. Speaking exclusively to The Irish Catholic, the retired Archbishop of Armagh, who celebrates his 92nd birthday this week, also paid tribute to the ''overwhelming majority of priests who are continuing to selflessly serve communities all over the country''.
In his first public comments on the issue since the publication of the Ryan Report into abuse in Church-run industrial schools, Cardinal Daly said the report was a ''shocking example'' of ''how the Church has not lived up to the challenge of the Gospel''.
''The most obvious way we have not lived up to it is summarised in the Ryan Report where to our shame and sorrow we have found that people who had the trust of the Church and the faithful actually betrayed that trust.
''We have harboured among us those who should be pastors protecting their flock, but instead have scandalised their flock,'' he said.
Cardinal Daly said ''as a result of these scandals the Church has to be more penitential and more humble in the way we preach the Gospel''.
He also appealed to bishops, priests and lay people to be ''more missionary in their approach to modern Ireland''.
''It is not enough to be stuck at a maintenance model of the Church, the Church must be missionary at home as well as abroad,'' he said.
Paying tribute to the Irish people, Cardinal Daly said he had the ''great privilege'' to work with priests and lay people ''who are hugely devoted to the work of spreading the Gospel''.
While acknowledging that there might be a lot of ''understandable anger'' among some people about the scandals, ''that is equalled, and in fact, excelled by the confidence people have in their local clergy and the knowledge they have that their priests are 100 per cent committed to their vocations,'' he said. Cardinal Daly said: ''the potential for a new beginning in the Church in Ireland is very great; I am in no way pessimistic about the future. We may have diminished numbers at Mass, and that is disappointing, but I believe there is more commitment and more conviction from those people who are there''.
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