A judicial report into the handling of allegations of child sexual
abuse against clerics in the Diocese of Cloyne has concluded that the
Church’s own guidelines were “not fully or consistently implemented” in
the diocese as recently as 2008.
The report, released by Judge
Yvonne Murphy, also said Cloyne Bishop John Magee admitted to what has
been described as inappropriate behaviour with a young man. It said the
bishop embraced him, kissed him and told the young aspirant for the
priesthood that he loved him.
The 400-page report also records for
the first time stark disagreement among Irish bishops over whether
Bishop Magee – a former secretary to three popes – should quit as bishop
of Cloyne after December 2008, when the National Board for Safeguarding
Children in the Catholic Church said he was using child safeguarding
policies that were “inadequate and, in some respects, dangerous”.
At
an emergency meeting of the Irish bishops’ conference in January 2009,
just weeks after the report critical of Bishop Magee, “there were strong
opinions on both sides” as to whether the bishop should quit.
“The
strongest argument in favour of resignation was made by Archbishop
[Diarmuid] Martin” of Dublin, the report said.
At the time, Cardinal
Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, emphatically insisted that
Bishop Magee should not go despite the latter having admitted to the
inappropriate behaviour with the young man in question.
The
commission was charged with investigating the handling of allegations
made against 19 priests from 1996 – when the Church in Ireland first
implemented child protection procedures – to 2009.
The commission found
that “the primary responsibility for the failure to implement the agreed
procedures lies with Bishop Magee”.
“It is a remarkable fact,”
the report notes, “that Bishop Magee took little or no active interest
in the management of clerical child sexual abuse cases until 2008.”
The commission accuses the Vatican of being “entirely unhelpful” to bishops who wanted to fully implement the agreed guidelines.
In
particular, the report referred to a letter from the apostolic nuncio
to Ireland a year after the 1996 guidelines were introduced in which he
informed bishops that the Holy See was refusing to grant the document
Vatican approval.
The Congregation for Clergy, the letter noted,
insisted that the guidelines were not in conformity with canon law.
“There
can be no doubt that this letter greatly strengthened the position of
those in the Church in Ireland who did not approve of the framework
document as it effectively cautioned them against implementation.
“This
effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the
procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those
who … dissented from the stated official Irish Church position.”
The
report is highly critical of the Cloyne vicar general, Mgr Denis
O’Callaghan, who, it notes, “did not approve of the requirement to
report [allegations] to the civil authorities”.
The commission
notes that “one of the ironies of Mgr O’Callaghan’s position is that it
was clear from his evidence that, in most cases, he believed the
complaints, which make his failure to implement his own Church’s policy
all the more surprising.
“He also displayed some inexplicable failures to recognise child sexual abuse,” the report adds.
The
report says allegations of abuse and concerns about inappropriate
behaviour were raised against nearly eight per cent of priests serving
in the diocese. One priest of the diocese has been convicted while
another was successful in having his trial halted because of his age.
One chapter of the report is heavily redacted because the cleric
involved is currently before the courts.
Regarding canon law, the
commission found that there was a “haphazard and sometimes sloppy”
approach to canonical investigations.
On a positive note, the
commission concludes that “there was no case in which the Diocese of
Cloyne moved priests against whom allegations had been made to another
parish or out of the diocese altogether”.
Cloyne was also
criticised for its failure to properly record and maintain information
about complaints of child sexual abuse until 2008.
The diocese
drew attention in 2008 when social service authorities expressed concern
to the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church
that Bishop Magee was not following the Church’s own child safeguarding
guidelines properly.
Initially, Bishop Magee resisted calls to
resign and pledged to assist the investigation.
However, in March 2009
the Vatican announced the appointment of an apostolic administrator – at
Bishop Magee’s request – and said Bishop Magee would no longer exercise
power of governance but would retain the title of bishop of Cloyne.
In
March 2010, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted
Bishop Magee’s resignation.
Three of Ireland’s 26 Catholic
dioceses have now been subject to judicial inquiries that have severely
criticised Church leaders and found that the reputation of priests and
the Church and the avoidance of scandal were put ahead of the rights of
children to be protected from abuse.
A high-profile team of senior
prelates recently concluded the first phase of an apostolic visitation
of the church in Ireland at the request of Pope Benedict.
The Pope
announced the move in a March 2010 letter to the Catholics of Ireland in
which he repeated his shame and sorrow at the abuse and the subsequent
mishandling of cases and warned Irish bishops that their failures had
“obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of
persecution succeeded in doing”.
In May, the head of the
safeguarding children board, Ian Elliott, admitted that he had consider
resigning over what he described as a lack of co-operation from senior
Church leaders in Ireland to his auditing of dioceses handling of
allegations.
Bishops had withdrawn from the auditing process, citing
data protection concerns.
However, all dioceses are now co-operating
according to the board, and the body expects to complete the audits in
the coming year.