Irish Bishops Called on the Carpet

Posted on Feb 15, 2010

Flickr / roblisameehan

The long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal within Dublin’s Archdiocese is still the Catholic Church’s problem, and on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI met with Irish bishops for the first part of a two-day strategy and damage-control session at the Vatican.  —KA

BBC:

BBC religious affairs correspondent Christopher Landau says bishops from a particular country normally visit the Vatican around once every five years.

But the Pope has summoned Ireland’s bishops for a special two-day meeting, specifically to address the issue that has severely undermined Catholicism’s standing there, our correspondent says.

The Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin - the Murphy report - published in November, found the Church had “obsessively” hidden child abuse from 1975 to 2004, and operated a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

Some bishops still in office had been part of the cover-up, the report said.

Four out of five key bishops who were particularly criticised have now resigned, but the fifth, Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan, is expected to meet the Pope.

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.