THE VATICAN should meet the cost of the compensation and legal bills emanating from clerical child sex abuse claims in the diocese of Ferns rather than parishioners, Colm O’Gorman, founder of victims group One in Four has said.Mr O’Gorman, who was sexually abused by Fr Seán Fortune and later sued the diocese of Ferns in a move that helped bring the issue of clerical sex abuse into the public domain, strongly criticised a call yesterday by Bishop of Ferns Dr Denis Brennan for parishioners to help pay the diocese legal bills.
“If the Vatican is serious about supporting the Irish church and the rebuilding and recovery of the church let it finance it,” said Mr O’Gorman, who added it was a bit rich for the diocese to ask parishioners to put their hands in their pocket to pay for the corruption of the institution of the church.
He said the Catholic Church was one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet and should show some of the much vaunted humility it is good at preaching but not good at practising.
He said victims of clerical sex abuse took cases against the church because they wanted to hold the institution responsible, not the people sitting in pews.
“I would encourage them to get the church to look to its own assets and own wealth. Anyone that was offended by the sheer vulgarity and grandiosity of the pictures that we saw coming out of the so-called summit by Irish bishops in Rome last week will see the amount of money that swills around in the Vatican and the global church coffers. Let [us] see them divest themselves of some of that sort of wealth,” he added.
Mr O’Gorman’s comments on RTÉ radio yesterday were echoed by another victim of clerical sex abuse, Christine Buckley.
She told Newstalk the call by Dr Brennan for parishoners to help pay the bill for abuse was “outrageous”.
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