The Sydney Morning Herald
May 5, 2012
Henry Mcdonald
Cardinal Sean Brady … calls to resign. Photo: Peter Morrison
DUBLIN: The Irish Catholic primate, Sean Brady, is under intense pressure to stand down over a child abuse row after further calls for his resignation were made by Ireland’s Foreign Minister and the editor of the influential newspaper The Irish Catholic.
Cardinal Brady is resisting demands that he step down after revelations on television this week that he failed to inform parents and police about a list of children who were being sexually abused by one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priests.
The leader of Ireland’s Catholics has refused to accept he should resign his position despite the scandal over a 1975 deal between a young boy abused by Father Brendan Smyth and the church which bought the young victim’s silence for decades.
A BBC investigation found the victim gave Cardinal Brady, who was a note-taker at the meeting where the deal was made, a list of names and addresses of children Smyth was abusing. Cardinal Brady, who was then a priest, did not inform the children’s parents or the police.
Sam Adair, one of those abused by Father Smyth after 1975, told Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE: ”The facts of the matter are that this man was a leading, skilled canon lawyer, highly paid and sought after, and promoted to the highest rank of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. He was a skilled canon lawyer; he was not a note-taker.”
Eamon Gilmore, who is Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister as well as the Foreign Minister, intensified the pressure on Cardinal Brady to resign, joining Garry O’Sullivan, editor of the The Irish Catholic, as well as Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, in calling for him to step down.
”I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state,” Mr Gilmore said. ”I think it is the job of government and of the state to enact our laws and to ensure that those laws apply to everybody whether they belong to a church or not.
”But it is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority.”
Speaking in parliament, Mr Gilmore described the revelations in the television program as ”another horrific episode of failure by senior members of the Catholic Church to protect children”, and said the cardinal should resign for failing to report the accusations to the authorities.
The Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, who last year denounced Vatican interference in investigations into clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, said the office he held precluded him from calling for the cardinal’s resignation but on Wednesday said the primate should ”reflect” on the contents of the BBC program.
While The Irish Catholic often defends the church from liberal and secular opponents, O’Sullivan, writing in Dublin’s Evening Herald, accused Cardinal Brady of demonstrating no ”emotion of human sentiment for victims” on RTE television on Wednesday evening, when the Catholic primate insisted he would not step down.
O’Sullivan said it was better for the church’s ”future recovery” that he now resign and ”hand in his hat”, a significant intervention which will increase the pressure both in Ireland and Rome.
Mr McGuinness said: ”Ultimately, Cardinal Brady’s response is a matter for himself and the church, but it is a very grave situation for survivors of abuse, for the Catholic Church and for Catholics across Ireland.
”Speaking personally, I believe he should reflect on the wisdom of this position which will leave many Catholics wondering whether anything is to be done by the leadership of the Catholic Church to ring the changes which many believe are required at such a sad time for all.”
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Ireland’s top Catholic cleric faces calls to resign over abuse scandal
CNN
May 4, 2012 — Updated 1509 GMT (2309 HKT)
From Peter Taggart, for CNN
- NEW: An abuse survivor says Cardinal Sean Brady should face more questions
- Brady being criticized for how he handled cases of sexual abuse of children by priests
- A new TV documentary says Brady was more involved in a 1970s cover-up than he admits
- Brady says he did what he was supposed to do at the time and insists he won’t resign
Belfast, Northern Ireland (CNN) — Ireland’s top Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Sean Brady, was under mounting pressure to resign Friday amid renewed allegations about his role in dealing with the sexual abuse of children by priests.
A British television documentary repeated claims made in 2010 that Brady was told of attacks by pedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth in 1975 but did not inform police or the parents of the victims.
The documentary also claimed that Brady, then a priest, had a greater role in the church investigation of the Smyth allegations than he has admitted. New details and documents also were produced.
Responding to the BBC program, Brady repeated his defense that he had done his job by passing details of all allegations to his superiors.
He told CNN that he felt “betrayed” when he discovered that church officials had taken no action against Smyth, who continued to abuse children for years throughout Ireland and in the United States.
Smyth was eventually imprisoned and has since died.
Brady has accepted that during the 1970s, he was “part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the church,” but he has insisted he does not intend to resign.
The Catholic Church in Ireland said Friday that a previous request from Brady for Pope Benedict XVI to send a bishop to help him with his work would be “reactivated.”
Calls continued from abuse victims and lawmakers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for Brady to step down.
Abuse survivor Jon McCourt told CNN that further inquiries should be made into Brady’s role.
“Many people have been prosecuted for a lot less and served years in prison,” he said.
“At the very least, an investigation should be carried out. The law is the law, there was no immunity. He was legally obliged to inform the authorities, and not doing so has caused a lot of people a lot of pain.”
One of the most senior politicians to speak out has been Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore.
“It is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,” he said.
Gilmore, also the country’s foreign minister, last year decided to close Ireland’s embassy in the Vatican, citing the need to cut costs. Brady said then he was “profoundly disappointed.”
The government and church in the mainly Catholic country have been at loggerheads in recent times after a series of state-backed investigations into sexual abuse by priests and other church figures over several decades.