POPE Benedict XVI will study a crucial report on the future of the embattled Bishop of Limerick, as pressure continues to mount on five Irish bishops to resign.Bishop Donal Murray, who has been in Rome for eight days, is waiting for a summons to a second meeting with the powerful Congregation of Bishops headed by Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.
Last night sources in the Vatican suggested that at this crucial meeting Bishop Murray would be told that Pope Benedict XVI wants him to resign for the good of the Church.
But the Irish Independent has learned that at his first meeting with Cardinal Re last Monday, Bishop Murray pleaded mitigation.
He supplied the congregation with documents which he believed highlight inaccuracies in the damning Murphy report into sex abuse in the Dublin Diocese.
As required by canon law, Cardinal Re has been drawing up his interim report with his own judgment on Bishop Murray. It will be delivered in time for the ultimate decision by Pope Benedict, expected in the coming days.
A spokesman for the Bishop of Limerick said there were a number of omissions in the Murphy report which sparked the crisis -- and said some of the details were "incorrect".
Bishop Murray told Cardinal Re that he was mentioned nine times in the Murphy report -- in six of which he was not criticised at all.
Bishop Murray claimed that in none of these three critical mentions of his handling of abuse cases did he receive an allegation of a child being sexually abused.
At one point in the Murphy report, Bishop Murray's inaction regarding Fr Tom Naughton in Valleymount, Co Wicklow, are described as "inexcusable".
Bishop Murray was criticised for not renewing his inquiries after it was discovered that Naughton was later abusing children in his new parish of Donnycarney, Co Dublin.
But Bishop Murray recalled being at table with other auxiliary bishops -- and the then Archbishop, Dermot Ryan -- when Naughton's continued offending was the subject of discussion.
He pleaded that he was an inexperienced auxiliary, naive in dealing with child sex abuse. So he did not take the initiative of going back to Valleymount.
Bishop Murray appears to have thrown himself at the mercy of Pope Benedict and Cardinal Re by admitting that he did not deal adequately with the Naughton case.
He also supplied Cardinal Re with extensive documentation querying conclusions reached by Judge Yvonne Murphy.
Meanwhile, the Irish Independent has learned that, on the return of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin from his Rome meeting with Pope Benedict he addressed a meeting of Dublin priests on Saturday at his residence in Drumcondra.
The meeting had been pre-arranged to discuss the Irish Church's year of vocations promotions to recruit new priests.
Fury
But, according to clerical sources, the mood of the Dublin priests was one of fury that Bishop Murray and four other bishops -- Eamonn Walsh, Ray Field, Jim Moriarty and Martin Drennan -- had not yet resigned for the good of the Church.
Fr Vincent Twomey, a leading moral theologian and former doctoral student of Pope Benedict, also said yesterday that the refusal of the five bishops to resign was "great scandal".
"The longer they dig their heels in and refuse to resign, the greater damage they are doing to the Church," Fr Twomey said.
A further call for the resignation of the bishops has been made by the lay Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful Ireland.
Last night the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests hit out at the failure of the Papal Nuncio Guiseppe Leanza and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to assist with the Murphy investigation.
It also dismissed a restructuring of the Irish Church as "just talk".
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