CARDINAL'S ADDRESS: THE CATHOLIC Church in Ireland must seriously consider the manner in which clerical sexual abuse of children was dealt with and build solid foundations for “true renewal”, Cardinal Seán Brady has said.Speaking at a Good Friday service in his archdiocese, Dr Brady referred to his discussions this week with victims of abuse, and vowed that such a listening process should continue.
He was greeted with warm applause by the large congregation at St Patrick’s Church in Dundalk, Co Louth, as the traditional Good Friday service began.
This listening process was “part of acknowledging the sinful and criminal acts which have taken place and which must be addressed”, he said.
Apologising again for such abuse, the cardinal said: “We bishops failed . . . in our response to the crime of child abuse.” He said he was sorry that this had happened, adding that such sorrow should prompt the bishops to “find ways to repair the damage” and to right the wrong that had been endured by abuse victims.
The church needed “to continue to identify what exactly is required to make reparation for the past and to build solid foundations for true renewal in the future”.
“We have heard calls for material help and for spiritual help,” he said. “Those calls must be considered and responded to properly. That process of making reparation for the past must continue. Part of it will mean a deepening concern for all the members of the church, especially survivors of abuse, as Pope Benedict asks us in his pastoral letter of 20th March last.”
Repeating his sorrow, Cardinal Brady admitted: “Much more needs to be done.”
“The church in Ireland needs to continue to identify what exactly is required to make reparation for the past and to build solid foundations for true renewal in the future,” he said.
Cardinal Brady said the church’s Easter message and the lessons of Christ’s suffering would provide inspiration. “The self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ is our only hope,” he said. “Christ’s own wounds have the power to set us free from the power of evil. They get that power from the suffering which Jesus Christ endured in his passion and death. By his bruises we are healed. By his wounds we are reborn to new life and new hope.”
Meanwhile, a church spokesman defended the cardinal following a report yesterday that paedophile priest Brendan Smyth had been ministering at two hospitals in Counties Cork and Kerry some 18 years after Dr Brady’s investigation of him in the diocese of Kilmore in 1975.
A spokesman said that Fr Brady, as he then was, was based at the Irish College in Rome at the time and would have known nothing about the whereabouts of Smyth in the early 1990s.
When still a priest and a teacher in Co Cavan in 1975, Fr Brady had been asked by Bishop McKiernan to interview two children who had made allegations of ill-treatment at the hands of Smyth.
Last month, Dr Brady confirmed he had done so and that following his report to Dr McKiernan, all diocesan faculties had been withdrawn from Smyth.
However, it was reported yesterday that Smyth subsequently was allowed to act as chaplain at two Munster hospitals some three years after he was initially sought by the authorities in relation to sex abuse cases in the North.
“Fr Brady would not have been aware of various ministries that Fr Brendan Smyth would have been involved in. They would have been the sole responsibility of Fr Smyth’s Norbertine Order. The Norbertine Order would have had, at all times, responsibility for Fr Smyth,” The Irish Times was told.
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