Another Irish Bishop Resigning in Wake of Abuse Report

Posted on Dec 23, 2009

Flickr / jmenard48

An interior look at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, one of many Catholic houses of worship in Dublin.

A report about pervasive and long-standing child abuse by Irish Catholic priests in Dublin has led to the resignation of two bishops from the local archdiocese. On Wednesday, Bishop Jim Moriarty followed in the footsteps of his colleague, Bishop Donal Murray, in announcing that he would soon travel to Rome to formally step down from his post.  —KA

AP via Google News:

[Bishop Jim] Moriarty said he accepted the investigators’ finding that he failed to react properly when told about abuse cases, particularly of one priest convicted of molesting girls in 1997. But he insisted that his own inaction reflected his colleagues’ poor communication and secrecy.

“It does not serve the truth to overstate my responsibility and authority within the archdiocese. Nor does it serve the truth to overlook the fact that the system of management and communications was seriously flawed,” Moriarty said in a prepared statement.

“However, with the benefit of hindsight, I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.