The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will be pressed to quit if he refuses to resign over the growing child abuse scandal, The Times has learnt. Nothing less than Cardinal Sean Brady’s resignation will diminish fury at the highest levels in Rome over his role in paedophile priest cover-ups.
The Northern Ireland Assembly prepared last night to order an official investigation into child abuse in the Province after details emerged of more attacks on children by members of the clergy.
Dr Brady is spending the days before Easter considering his position as Archbishop of Armagh. Although there is no canonical procedure to remove him, if he refuses to go voluntarily pressure from the Holy See will make his departure inevitable. “Ireland needs a fresh start,” a source in Rome said. “By clinging on, he is putting his own interests before the Church’s.”
The inquiry would be similar to that which uncovered a shocking litany of historic crimes in the Republic of Ireland last year.
An official investigation is expected to cost up to £40 million and take no longer than five years.
“It’s difficult to see anything other than a significant inquiry being held,” a senior government source said. “There was an acknowledgement that there’s a need to act with expediency.”
By announcing an apostolic visitation to the Irish Church in a letter last week, Pope Benedict XVI effectively placed it in receivership.
Dr Brady’s exit, after the resignations of two other bishops, would set in train a Catholic reformation in the country. Other bishops are also expected to go after the influential Tablet journal called for the forced retirement of nearly all as the mood in Ireland reaches “zero tolerance”.
Dr Brady apologised last week for his role in a church tribunal on allegations made by a 14-year-old boy against Brendan Smyth, a priest whose case brought down the Irish Government in 1994. The victim was sworn to secrecy after the proceedings.
But the view in Rome is that this has not gone far enough and there has been no popular groundswell of support for Dr Brady in Ireland.
The scandal spread closer to home for the Pope yesterday as, in Italy, a group of victims appeared on television to allege that two dozen priests in Verona had abused children at a school for the deaf for decades. The Holy See attempted to blame the media for whipping up a storm against the Pope as efforts intensified in London and Rome to prevent Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in September being derailed by the scandals.
Whitehall officials made clear yesterday that the visit, which is being co-ordinated by a cross-government committee, would go ahead as planned and had a valuable purpose. “Child abuse is an abhorrent crime,” one official said. But he insisted that the reasons for the visit — to consider ways of tackling poverty, climate change and other global issues — were still valid.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales are not expected to be caught up in the present wave of revelations because of action taken by the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, to clean up the Church a decade ago.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor appointed Lord Nolan to investigate the problem and, as a result of his report in 2001 and another subsequent inquiry, the Catholic Church in England and Wales has one of the strongest safeguarding procedures for children in the world.
A senior lay Catholic, Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity College, Oxford, and former British Ambassador to Italy, said that the actions taken by the bishops of England and Wales to safeguard children should have been taken in Ireland years ago.
“It would have lanced the boil a good deal earlier,” he said. “What is happening in Ireland is very sad and very damaging for Cardinal Brady. His position has been made pretty untenable.”
The most likely successor to Cardinal Brady is the highly regarded Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor, the youngest serving bishop in Ireland.
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