"I am apprehensive because I am deeply conscious of the trauma of these years past. So much suffering endured by young people at the hands of a few.
"Sufferings compounded by the failure of those who didn’t believe them and of those who didn’t hear their cry for help," Canon Crean said.
The Cloyne report, which investigated how clerical child sex abuse allegations were handled in the diocese between 1996 and 2009, detailed a catalogue of failures on the part of church authorities.
It laid the blame squarely with the former bishop, John Magee, who stepped down in 2010, and his child protection tsar, Msgr Denis O’Callaghan.
Canon Crean, parish priest in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, since 2006, said he was accepting his new role with both joy and trepidation and he asked that people give him a chance to "grasp the full measure" of the "deep hurt" suffered by victims of abuse and their families.
Canon Crean also spoke of his surprise at his promotion, a surprise echoed by other members of the clergy who were expecting a serving bishop to move into the Cloyne role.
He said he was under "no illusions about the myriad challenges that the Church in Ireland faces" but that he remained hopeful and steadfast and was committed to doing what he could with others in the diocese "to continue to bring healing and new hope to the lives of all victims of abuse and their families".
In this respect, Canon Crean is likely to be presiding when a decision is made on the future of the priest known as Fr B who has been the subject of a secret Church court or canonical trial.
The priest, also known pseudonymously as Fr Ronat, has had a number of abuse accusations made against him.
If found guilty, the most likely penalty is that he would be defrocked.
It’s understood Cloyne has settled civil law suits with nearly a dozen women who claim Fr B sexually abused them when they were schoolgirls.