VICTIMS support group One in Four has accused the Vatican of making a "wholly inadequate" response to the Murphy report and failing to accept responsibility for the cover-up of sexual abuse worldwide.Welcoming Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray’s decision, director Maeve Lewis said "the wholly inadequate response of the Vatican to the Dublin Report shows that the Catholic Church is incapable of accepting responsibility for the cover-up of sexual abuse across the world.
"The Irish people now need to decide if Catholic bishops are the appropriate people to have responsibility for child protection in schools and hospitals."
A statement from the Vatican on the resignation did not mention clerical abuse, but said the Pope had accepted Bishop Murray’s resignation according to a clause of Canon Law that calls on bishops to quit if they cannot fulfil their duties for a "serious reason".
Andrew Madden, who was abused by another of the priests named in the Archdiocese report, Fr Ivan Payne, said the bishops should be held to account in a criminal court for what they allowed happen.
"The efforts to ensure that these bishops are held to account must be intensified. We have known for a long time what the bishops did even before the Murphy Report. Other investigations have taken place before, but they have never gone anywhere. It must be different this time.
"Bishops Moriarty, Drennan, Walsh and Field, were also auxiliary bishops of Dublin during some of the period, between 1975 and 2004, covered by the Commission of Investigation. They were bishops that were part of a structure and culture that facilitated the sexual abuse of children... Their continued presence in office is an insult to every child sexually abused by a priest in the Dublin Archdiocese. They display a contemptible level of arrogance and an inappropriate lack of humility."
Priests in Galway met yesterday, but denied it was connected to growing pressure on Bishop Martin Drennan to step down.
On local radio, another former auxiliary bishop and now Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Bishop Moriarty, reiterated he does not consider there are grounds in the Fr Edmondus case upon which he should resign.
It will be next Spring before gardaí will have any results from their examination of how the Church and State authorities dealt with the clerical abuse highlighted in the Murphy report.
Mervyn Rundle, abused by Naughton in Donnycarney parish in 1984, said not only Bishop Murray but those responsible for the culture of cover up must be brought to book.
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