The failure on the part of the Vatican to take decisive action against Casey, against whom several serious complaints of sexual abuse had been made before his secret affair with Annie Murphy was exposed in 1992, was typical of the policy that prevailed under the Polish pope.
Coloured by indifference, the central feature of the policy was the safeguarding the reputation of the Church at all costs.
We saw, at first hand, evidence of this in Ireland in the Vatican’s reaction to the hugely damaging Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne reports — a reaction that triggered the now-famous speech in Dáil Éireann in July 2011 by the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.
In that speech, Kenny condemned the Church for its role in obstructing an investigation, describing it as a serious infringement of Ireland’s sovereignty, and said the sex abuse scandal revealed “the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day”.
The RTÉ documentary by reporter Anne Sheridan, , screened this week by RTÉ, showed that long before his affair with Annie Murphy was exposed, revealing his double life, serious allegations of abuse had been made against him, including the sexual abuse of his own niece.
He was a sexual predator, but how much of that was known to his fellow bishops?
Given the mounting evidence of the widespread sexual abuse of children from places like the USA, Australia and France, it is difficult to understand in retrospect how John Paul II could continue to turn a blind eye to the files that were piling up in Rome.
And it wasn’t just indifference Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II's given name, displayed.
He took action to shield a notorious abuser called Fr Marcial Maciel, and he sanctioned the rapid transfer of the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, after the latter’s role in covering up an extended paedophile scandal had been exposed by an investigative team from the .
That expose, which lifted the lid of a network of paedophile priests in the diocese, priests who had been moved from parish to parish by the archbishop despite their past record of abuse, was the subject-matter of Spotlight, an acclaimed 2015 film starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams.
Law was moved to Rome before he could face criminal charges in Boston, and given a post in the Basilica of St Mary Major, thereby bestowing diplomatic immunity on him and shielding him from the American courts. All of this happened on Wojtyla’s watch and with his approval.
In a fiercely critical 2005 biography, , John Cornwell said the problem of Vatican indifference of clerical paedophile abuse went right to the heart of the official Church, even into the papal apartment itself.
“The most remarkable case, within the ambit of John Paul’s haven, involved a prominent priest in whom John Paul continued to place trust, and upon whom he bestowed honours, despite credible allegations of abuse by victims who had nothing to gain from their accusations except the consolation of justice delayed.
“Standing accused of serial abuse of seminarians was Fr Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the of the order of the Legionnaires of Christ, born in 1920.
Not only was Maciel allowed to evade due process of canon law, but he was honoured with tokens of special papal privilege after the accusations had been made.
“As in the case of priests running harems of nuns for HIV-free sex in Africa, John Paul allowed the case of Maciel to gather dust for years within the Vatican.”
Mexican priest Maciel was the founder the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement, who was lauded in life as one of the church's great fundraisers along with his ability to recruit men to the priesthood.
It would be revealed later in his life he was a serial abuser of young boys and young men.
In 2006, John Paul II’s successor, Benedict XVI, eventually removed Maciel from active ministry.
After his death in 2008, it came to light that Maciel had been in sexual relationships with at least four women, and had fathered a number of children.
Eamonn Casey was, among the Irish bishops, a particular favourite of John Paul II.
It is noteworthy that, during the Pope’s historic visit to Ireland in 1979, Casey alone among the Irish bishops was granted the privilege of hosting a private dinner for the pope at his residence on Taylor’s Hill in Galway.
Casey himself claimed, after his affair with Annie Murphy was exposed by the , that when he eventually met the pope in the Vatican, the latter didn’t want him to resign.
That has never been officially confirmed by the Vatican, and is very hard to credit, even given the lax standards operating at the time.
As for Karol Wojtyla himself, the rush to have him declared a saint after his death in April 2005 was unseemly, to say the least.
Now that we know a lot more about his indifference (to put it mildly) to the burgeoning problem of sexual abuse of children by clergy (including in his native Poland during his time in office), it is surely time for a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the second longest pontificate in the history of the Church.