In Ireland yesterday, the government made public a 341-page report,
The Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne. The government commissioned the report in 2009 after the Church's own National Board for Safeguarding Children published a critical report on child protection practices in the diocese. As reported by the
Irish Times, the report released yesterday strongly criticizes the Vatican. The report says in part:
The document entitled Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response ... was agreed by the Irish Bishops’ Conference in 1996.... This document contained a detailed and easy to implement set of procedures for handling allegations, suspicions and concerns about clerical child sexual abuse....
Despite Bishop Magee’s stated position on the implementation of the Framework Document, the reality is that the guidelines set out in that document were not fully or consistently implemented in the Diocese of Cloyne in the period 1996 to 2009. The primary responsibility for the failure to implement the agreed procedures lies with Bishop Magee.... [He] took little or no active interest in the management of clerical child sexual abuse cases until 2008.... As a result of this vacuum, the diocese’s functions in the matter of clerical child sexual abuse were, by default, exercised by others, ... [principally] Monsignor O’Callaghan. He did not approve of ... the requirement to report to the civil authorities....
The reaction of the Vatican to the Framework Document was entirely unhelpful to any bishop who wanted to implement the agreed procedures.... The Congregation for the Clergy told the bishops of Ireland that the document was “not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document”. The Congregation further stated that it contained: “procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems....
This effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who, like Monsignor O’Callaghan, dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy.
In reaction to the report, Justice Minster Alan Shatter said he will introduce legislation making it a criminal offense to fail to report the sexual abuse of a child or a vulnerable adult. (
Irish Times.)
RTE News has a summary of the report and extensive coverage of the reaction to it by both Church and government officials. (See
prior related posting.)
