Victims of clerical child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin said they are close to despair because the church will not take full responsibility for covering up the abuse. Clergy abuse survivors met with Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on Friday to discuss the outcome of the meeting of Irish bishops with Pope Benedict XVI and senior officials from the Roman Curia.
The Vatican meeting reviewed a November report by an independent commission that investigated how the Dublin Archdiocese handled complaints of clerical child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004.
The commission, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, "found that the church deliberately covered up allegations of child abuse, but the only senior person who seems to accept that is Archbishop Martin," Maeve Lewis, director of the One in Four abuse survivors' group, told Catholic News Service.
She said that in the statement issued by the Vatican last week, the pope only accepted ''the failure of Irish church authorities for many years to act effectively in dealing with cases involving the sexual abuse of young people by some Irish clergy and religious."
"That is not good enough," she said, adding that the abuse survivors want "complete acceptance by the pope of the findings of the Murphy report."
"Archbishop Martin also told us that there was a chance that the pope wouldn't accept the resignations of the three auxiliary bishops named in the report who have offered him their resignation. If that would happen, the victims would find it unbelievable, they really would despair," she added.
Four bishops criticized in the Murphy report have offered their resignations, but so far the pope has officially accepted only one of them.
Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway and Kilmacduagh, also criticized in the report, has rejected demands by Catholic groups for his resignation.
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