New Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka said the developments around sexual abuse of children in Irish Catholic schools is a campaign aimed to push the church from education and cut it off financial resources, in his reaction to Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter he gave to CTK Monday. The Pope rebuked the Irish bishops for their unsuitable stand on the abuse of children by Catholic clergy.
Duka said, however, the church must take resolute steps against such failures.
"It is a clear campaign that aims at pushing the church from its position in upbringing and education that it has held from time immemorial and in which it has proved itself," Duka writes.
He says militant atheism is one of the motive forces of this pressure and that the campaign also aims at cutting the church from financial resources that help it be active in education.
According to statistics, Duka writes, the number of pedophile and similar cases is markedly lower among the Catholic clergy than in other educational institutions or in families.
"Besides, only about 10 percent of the accusations made are proved," Duka writes.
He said, however, that in spite of this, the church must take resolute steps in harmony with instructions by the previous Pope John Paul II.
In such cases, the church representative sends the case to civilian criminal proceedings and announces it to the Vatican.
"The letter from Benedict XVI to Ireland confirms the instruction of his predecessor John Paul II on the issue," Duka writes.
Three investigations that the Irish government ordered and whose results were published in 2005-09 document thousands of cases of child abuse by priests, nuns and monks at vicarages, boarding schools and orphanages.
Irish bishops did not report any case to the police until 1996 when the victims accused the church.
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