The Irish Catholic Church will hope it never again has to live through a year like 2009, a year when the litany of woes which befell it was unprecedented.The Catholic Church has been at the centre of sex abuse scandals in the United States and elsewhere before, but its public excoriation here is arguably its greatest fall from grace anywhere, given the unequalled access to power and influence the institutional Church has enjoyed since the founding of the state.
Since the start of 2009, three high-profile Catholic bishops have been forced to step aside for mishandling claims of rape and sexual assault against children.
The year was marked by the launch of an inquiry into the diocese of Cloyne and the conclusion of a separate inquiry into abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.
A third mid-year report revealed ‘‘endemic’’ levels of rape and sexual molestation had occurred at state-supported institutions run by Catholic congregations going back as far as the 1930s.
The investigation into the handling of abuse allegations in the Cork diocese of Cloyne was announced last January in response to a report by the Church’s monitoring body, the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC). It found that child protection practices in Cloyne were ‘‘inadequate, even dangerous’’.
Bishop John Magee, a former missionary in Nigeria who also holds the unique record of being secretary to three popes - Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II - stood aside from his post to facilitate the inquiry.
Counting the two concluded inquiries and the extant Cloyne probe, the three judicial inquiries will have covered a period ranging from the pre Emergency Free State to this year.
Nobody can doubt the prevailing thesis which has emerged thus far - that the Church which purports to live the word of a loving Jesus has utterly failed to do so.
The Cloyne inquiry is likely to conclude in late 2010, meaning there is more public excoriation to come.
The fallout from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, chaired by High Court judge Sean Ryan, was as unexpected as it was profound when it was published in May.
The nine-year long inquiry found that rape and sexual abuse of children was ‘‘endemic’’ in Irish Catholic Churchrun industrial schools, places of detention and orphanages.
Religious orders had devastated thousands of children’s lives; among their victims were children who had nowhere else to turn to seek refuge from rape and violent beatings.
The state’s paltry inspection system failed utterly to prevent decades of physical assault, rape and degradation carried out by members of religious orders, Ryan’s inquiry found. The breadth of the commission’s reportage was unprecedented in an Irish public inquiry.
The report - which ran to 2,600 pages over five volumes - examined the treatment and mistreatment of children in almost 260 Church-run institutions , and heard from thousands of witnesses.
Sexual molestation and rape were ‘‘endemic’’ in boys’ facilities, a disproportionate number of which were run by the Christian Brothers.
Although girls were less likely to suffer sexual abuse at the hands of clerics, the report found widespread degradation was perpetrated by nuns, including the revelation that, in some schools, a high level of ritualised beating was routine.
‘‘Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain, and were struck on all parts of the body," the report revealed. ‘‘Personal and family denigration was widespread."
Ryan’s report found that the congregations responded to evidence of abuse by moving offenders to other locations, where many abused again.
‘‘There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions, sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse," the report said.
‘‘The safety of children in general was not a consideration." The subsequent report into the handling of abuse claims in the Dublin archdiocese between 1975 and 2004, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, blew the lid off similar practices in parishes in the Dublin archdiocese.
Most critically, the Dublin archdiocese inquiry found four consecutive archbishops - up to and including former archbishop Desmond Connell, who was made a cardinal after he retired in Dublin in 2004, and some auxiliary bishops beneath them, had mishandled complaints of abuse.
The first of the former Dublinbased auxiliary bishops - later Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray - stepped aside nine days ago after he could no longer resist the pressure.
In one case, Murray’s handling of an abuse allegation was described as ‘‘inexcusable’’. He was one of five serving Irish bishops whose handling of allegations of abuse was considered in the Murphy report.
The Bishop of Kildare and Leighin, Jim Moriarty, last Wednesday offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI, accepting that he should have been more proactive in challenging the culture within the Church which facilitated child abuse.
Bishop Moriarty was auxiliary bishop in Dublin from1991 to 2002. In 1993, he received a complaint about ‘Fr Edmondus’, concerning the priest’s contact with young children.
This was the priest who abused victims’ rights campaigner Marie Collins when she was a 13-year-old patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, in 1960.
Moriarty discussed the complaint with Connell and local clerics, but took little further action, meaning that the concerns were ‘‘not taken as seriously as they should have been’’, the Murphy report found.
Then, on Christmas Eve, the Dublin resignations of two serving auxiliary bishops, Eamon Walsh and Raymond Field, were announced.
Immediately prior to Pope Benedict XVI accepting Murray’s resignation, the Vatican pledged to reform the entire structure of the Irish Church.
It remains to be seen what this will mean in practice.
The Vatican has so far failed to address the decision of two consecutive papal nuncios to ignore correspondence from Murphy’s inquiry, in which the commission asked the papal nunciature to forward any relevant information to the investigation team.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the reforms proposed by Rome must be ‘‘far-reaching’’. He added that responsibility for the litany of abuse uncovered in the inquiry must be taken by all who hold a position of authority. ‘‘There have been serious difficulties of structure and communication at management level in the Archdiocese of Dublin.
‘‘The Murphy Report indicated how decisions were taken which resulted in further children being abused. Accountability must be assumed for that, and radical reform is required in the archdiocese, not just in the area of children protection," Martin said.
Rome has not been more specific in its outline of the proposed reforms, while a spokeswoman for Martin’s office told The Sunday Business Pos t that Martin had no further details as yet.
Martin has been praised for his role in reforming child protection practices in the capital.
But while Maeve Lewis of One In Four said that Martin deserved credit, it was ‘‘simply unacceptable’’ that the implementation of child protection measures nationwide remained largely at the discretion of bishops, some of whom had a track record of disregard for the welfare of victims of clerical abuse.
The handling of abuse claims in the diocese of Cloyne is in the investigative phase. Minister for Children Barry Andrews ordered Judge Murphy’s team - which includes barrister Ita Mangan and solicitor Hugh O’Neill - to examine the handling of clerical abuse complaints after it emerged that the diocesan management failed to report clerical abuse allegations to the HSE.
The Cloyne case will undoubtedly heap further damage on the beleaguered Church, and might also raise further questions over the role played by An Garda Siochána. Magee told gardaí in December 2005 about a complaint of abuse dating back to the early 1980s against ‘Fr W’.
The bishop acted contrary to agreed childcare guidelines established after the 2005 Ferns Inquiry by not telling the HSE about the claims against the priest.
At the time the commission was asked to probe Cloyne, there were four cases of alleged abuse made against several clerics in the diocese which Magee had not told the HSE about.
But, crucially, in each of these cases, Magee had informed gardaí about the claims against the priest, and in each case the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), James Hamilton, examined files relating to the complaints.
Gardaí also failed to inform the HSE that the complaint existed, and it was only after the case of Fr W was highlighted by One In Four that the HSE became aware of the allegation.
In the background to the mishandling of abuse cases is the lack of any system by which agencies such as the gardaí and HSE can exchange information relating to potential child abusers.
An HSE audit in 2008 floundered because the bishops received legal advice that there was no legal protection to ensure protection from civil liability if they collated and passed so-called ‘soft information’ to other agencies about persons suspected, though not convicted, of abusive conduct.
The Irish Catholic Church is not always a homogeneous entity, and conflict has arisen between religious orders and dioceses over the response to both the Murphy and Ryan reports.
In particular, fissures emerged during the end of 2009 between the 18 religious orders which pledged to give more money to cover the state’s €1 billion-plus redress bill for victims of institutional abuse.
Some of the congregations defied a specific request by the government to keep the details of their financial assets and pledges confidential.
The Taoiseach office had informed the orders that the government would prefer to inform victims’ representatives first about the value of the congregation’s assets and their increased offers of compensation, before the offers made by the Church bodies were publicised.
This was confirmed to The Sunday Business Post by the Provincial of the Dominican Order, Fr Pat Lucy. Lucy’s spokesman, Fr Bernard Treacy, explained that the order was ‘‘withholding details of their offer out of respect for the victims and in line with the government’s request’’.
By contrast, the Christian Brothers caught Brian Cowen and education minister Batt O’Keeffe by surprise - releasing details of their offer on their website and in a press statement in early December, which prompted 14 of the congregations to follow suit.
O’Keeffe told the Dáil that his department had wanted to give the survivors an opportunity to be ‘‘the first to know’’ about the details of the congregations’ offers. That was ultimately denied to them.
In total, it is expected that the congregations will hand over a sum equivalent to €360 million in cash and unencumbered properties to a state founded trust for victims.
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