A SECOND bishop of the five still in office who feature in the Dublin diocesan report published last Thursday was criticised last night following a statement he read at Masses in his diocese yesterday.Abuse victim Marie Collins said she found it remarkable that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty should make no reference to his own role in the Dublin report, in the message he had read at Masses yesterday.
In 1993, Bishop Moriarty received a complaint about Fr Edmondus concerning the priest’s contact with young children. This was the priest who abused Marie Collins in 1960 when she was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.
The Dublin report found that there was “no proper investigation” of the complaint. “For example, the youth workers who first raised them were not even interviewed at the time,” it said.
Ms Collins said last night that this, and the fact that Bishop Moriarty made no reference in the letter he had read at all Masses in his diocese yesterday to his own role in the Dublin report, was “par for the course” where the bishops were concerned.
It was an “ignore it and it will go away,” mentality, she said. Bishop Moriarty should have to answer and not be allowed get away with silence. Again it’s arrogance,” she said.
Meanwhile, it has been reported to The Irish Times that a parish priest in the Kildare and Leighlin diocese refused to read out Bishop Moriarty’s message at Mass yesterday.
Fr Paul O’Boyle, parish priest in Clane, Co Kildare, refused “in all conscience” to read the bishop’s statement in response to the Dublin report, according to a member of the congregation.
The person, who contacted The Irish Times , said Fr O’Boyle “began by saying that everybody involved needs to take full responsibility for their actions, then emphasised all of the child-protection measures that the parish uses”.
Asked about this last night, Fr O’Boyle said that “the letter from Bishop Moriarty was made available at all Masses in the parish over the weekend and attention was drawn to it during my comments. I have no issue or criticism with what Bishop Moriarty said. I simply took the opportunity to speak directly to the issue myself, in addition to making the bishop’s letter available.”
Bishop Moriarty was an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1991 to 2002. In 1993 he received a complaint about Fr Edmondus concerning the priest’s contact with young children.
Bishop Moriarty discussed the complaint with local priests and then Archbishop Desmond Connell. No attempt was made by archdiocesan authorities to check the archives or other files relating to Fr Edmondus when these complaints were received, the Dublin report said.
It continued that “Bishop Moriarty pointed out to the commission that he did not have access to the archives but he could have asked the archbishop to conduct a search.”
This failure to check about other complaints “meant that the concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been. There was no proper investigation of these concerns. For example, the youth workers who first raised them were not even interviewed at the time,” the report said.
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