The head of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers has said the order’s
future is uncertain because of costly settlements in child abuse cases.
Brother Philip Pinto said that the congregation, which has 1,200 members, “just doesn’t have the money any longer”.
He
said that the order’s decision to seek bankruptcy protection in New
York was aimed at “trying to ensure that people who have been abused are
the ones who get the money, not the lawyers”, he said during a break in
a conference on religious life sponsored by the Conference of Religious
of Ireland.
Forty per cent of the costs relating to abuse settlements were “going to the lawyers”, he said.
The
North American province was especially vulnerable to disappearing, he
said, explaining that it would take “something drastic” to save it.
“In
most of the developed world, we are paying for the sins of the past,”
he said. “Our brothers are aging, our reputation is in tatters, and the
future looks bleak, even hopeless. So many of my brothers hide in their
monasteries, afraid of drawing attention to themselves.”
The
Indian-born brother who has been congregational leader since 2002 blamed
a culture in which “religious in Ireland were abused by the system”.
Another
conference speaker, Nuala O’Loan, former police ombudsman in Northern
Ireland, told attendees that “it wasn’t just the religious
congregations” who were responsible for abuse in institutions and
schools operated by religious congregations.
She suggested that the
“congregations have been made the scapegoats for the failures of all”.
She
criticised “successive Irish governments” who “allowed the children
under their care to be deprived of their safety and security and
permitted children to be held in institutions in which terrible things
happened”.
The Christian Brothers Institute, the legal arm of the
Edmund Rice Christian Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection in the
United States amid mounting abuse claims.
The majority of claims relate
to the order’s schools in the Seattle area and Newfoundland in Canada.