At their annual autumn meeting in Maynooth, the bishops said the publication of the report was a further step “in shining the light of truth into our collective past”.
The report, they said, exposed once again the “widespread abuse of our most vulnerable by those in whom parents had placed so much trust”.
Addressing the traumas of the past, the bishops underlined is “an indispensable part of the renewal of the life of the Church in Ireland”.
The government is to establish a statutory inquiry into historic abuse at day and boarding schools run by religious orders in Ireland.
The scoping inquiry, which was ordered by the government following an RTÉ Radio documentary, Blackrock Boys, which recounted abuse at Blackrock College, run by the Spiritan congregation, found 2,395 allegations of abuse in 308 schools run by 42 religious orders.
The report revealed a “particularly high number of allegations” in schools for children with disabilities: 590 allegations in 17 schools involving 190 alleged abusers.
Discussing the report’s findings, the bishops described the report as a testimony to the bravery of survivors who had “heart-breaking experience of childhood abuse and trauma” and they stressed that the impact of this lasts “a lifetime”.
“The report makes for harrowing reading. The failure by individuals and institutions is a strong theme in the scoping inquiry. All too obvious is the absence of both a culture of child safeguarding and of general respect towards children and their families,” the bishops said.
They underlined that while the safeguarding of children is now well established in both policy and culture across the catholic schools system and in wider Church and civil society, “we cannot relent in our vigilance”.