Vatican names bishop for troubled Irish diocese
AP
VATICAN CITY The pope on Saturday named a new bishop for the troubled Irish diocese of Cloyne, where for years its previous bishop ignored the Irish church's own rules requiring suspected priestly sex abuse to be reported to police. The new bishop promptly vowed to do everything in his power to help abuse victims heal.
Cloyne has been without a resident bishop since John Magee, private secretary to three popes, resigned in disgrace as bishop in 2010 after a church-appointed commission found that he and his deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two pedophile priests starting in 1995, but told police nothing until 2003, and little thereafter.
The findings were particularly galling since the Irish church, under mounting pressure and lawsuits stemming from revelations of wide-scale priest sex abuse and cover-up, had adopted a policy in 1996 requiring bishops to report abuse to police. The Cloyne report, however, found that Magee took no hands-on interest in enacting the policy until 2008.
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday named the Rev. Canon William Crean, a parish priest in Cahersiveen, to replace the apostolic administrator who has been running the diocese in Magee's absence. Crean, 60, has been a director of religious education in several Irish schools and received his theology degree from the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
In his initial remarks, Crean promised Saturday to work with his staff to "bring healing and new hope to the lives of all victims of abuse and their families."
"As I accept this appointment, you will appreciate that I feel apprehensive because I am deeply conscious of the trauma of these years past - so much suffering endured by young people at the hands of a few, sufferings compounded by the failure of those who didn't believe them and those who didn't hear their cry for help," he said from St. Colman's Cathedral.
Following the church's fact-finding commission into the abuses in Cloyne, the Irish government last year issued its own report into the southwest rural County Cork diocese and found that the Vatican had encouraged the concealing of the crimes by warning bishops that their 1996 policy violated church law.
- Vatican rejects Irish critics over sex abuse
- Irish confront Vatican diplomat over pedophiles
- Vatican told Irish bishops not to report abuse
Citing the Cloyne report, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered a now-infamous tirade against the Holy See in July 2011, accusing it of sabotaging the 1996 policy and denouncing the "dysfunction, disconnection, elitism" that he said dominated Vatican culture today. The Vatican vigorously denied Kenny's accusations, but a diplomatic chill ensued. Ireland closed its embassy to the Holy See soon thereafter.
The Cloyne report was the fourth state fact-finding probe into how church leaders for decades protected pedophiles and their own reputations at the expense of Ireland's children. The finding have decimated the church's reputation and standing in the once-devoutly Catholic nation.
Popular on CBSNews.com
-
One year after Afghan massacre, villagers work with U.S. troops One year after U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians, the villagers in the town where the atrocity took place have joined the U.S. special forces stationed there to assist in the fight against the Taliban.
- Widespread protests in Brazil 23 Photos
- 50th Paris Air Show 13 Photos
- Italy top court cites "erotic game" hypothesis in Knox case 84 Comments
- One of FBI's Ten Most Wanted nabbed in Mexico
- Torrential rain devastates Northern India 15 Photos
- Egypt and Ethiopia try to roll back threats of war
- Protesters clash with Brazil police in Sao Paulo
- Afghan gov't halts talks with U.S. on security pact
BUT RELIGION IS THE SEED OF EVIL.
The Church's efforts have been working extremely well, to the point that in the last three years an average of six cases per year have been reported against priests in the U.S., a country that has over 41,000 priests, a number that is growing year by year.
This means that 99.9% of the Catholic priests in the U.S. remained faithful to the Church and to their vows.
The secular world could learn much from what the Church has accomplished, since the best estimate of sexual abuse of children in public schools in the U.S. is as much as 100 times greater than anything that ever happened at the hands of Catholic priests.
Elsewhere in the secular world the sexual abuse of children is at epidemic proportions, both at home among family members and in organized criminal enterprises.
I'm sorry to inform you of this but you really don't know what you're talking about, nor will you ever if your only input into this situation is restricted to "see(ing) them (SNAP) on the news."
I have communicated directly with SNAP officials in the past and even they admit that the abuse cases they are working on include Protestant ministers, evangelical preachers, Jewish Rabbis, Anglican clerics, public school teachers and many other categories of professionals.
I would recommend that you get on the website, StopBaptistPredators.org to get an idea of what I'm trying to explain to you.
You most probably will continue to hate the Catholic Church regardless of the absence of sexual abuse of minors among priests and that is your prerogative.
But you cannot claim to know the truth because you don't. Learn something true before you post here again.