Pope Outlines Scope Of Irish Abuse Probe

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Catholic archbishops of New York and Boston will meet personally with victims of abusive priests as part of a Vatican investigation of the Catholic Church in Ireland, the Vatican announced on Friday (Nov. 12).

Pope Benedict XVI called for the investigation, called an Apostolic Visitation, last March in an open letter to Irish Catholics that addressed a growing scandal over clerical sex abuse of children.

Since 2003, four government-sponsored investigations have revealed widespread child abuse over a period of decades by Irish Catholic clergy. The revelations have led to the resignations of three bishops.

The five-month visitation aims to assess the church's effectiveness in responding to abuse cases, assisting victims and protecting children under the church's care, the Vatican said. It will not investigate or make judgments on particular cases of abuse.

The Vatican statement noted the responsibility of Irish church authorities to investigate abuse charges, and to "inform the competent civil and ecclesiastical authorities, in conformity with the current civil and ecclesiastical laws."

The Vatican emphasized that the visitation "will in no way interfere with the ordinary activity of local magistrates ... nor with the work of any legislative authority, which has competence in the area of prevention of abuse of minors."

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston will lead the investigation of the Archdiocese of Dublin and the dioceses in its province. New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan will investigate five Irish seminaries. Sister Sharon Holland, a Michigan-based expert in church law who worked
at the Vatican until 2009, is on a four-person team assigned to investigate religious orders in Ireland.

None of the investigators will grant interviews "during the first phase of the Visitation," the Vatican said.

The lead investigators will also attend services in each of the country's four archdioceses as part of "penitential activities" sponsored by Irish bishops, which include "prayer, fasting and
almsgiving."

Comments

[moflard]

07:25 AM on 11/16/2010

Meanwhile in Spain another Priest has just been arrested for having 21,000(!) paedophile images on his computer. The same village had previously had as their parish priest a drunk and before that a thief.

[No One You Know]

10:28 PM on 11/15/2010

The pope calls for a visit in March and it takes them 7 months to get around to it?

[SilentSolidarity]

05:53 PM on 11/15/2010

I don't get it. With the Pope at the top, the Vatican is a political government and a Christian denomination. All bishops and clerics are his ambassadors. Therefore there should be a way to prosecute all involved in this, especially Benedict who denied child abuse in the R.C.C. for years!

[ligligl]

01:44 PM on 11/15/2010

HUBRIS
There is no god, there is no heaven or hell or even purgatory, Dead is dead. There is no life after death. How can there be? We are not the cause of our existence, we are the result of our environment. Remember the Spanish discourse on whether Indians had souls or were just animals. Animals don’t have souls? For that matter, all animal life, insects, plants, bacteria, viruses? 2308263650000000000 ants exist on earth. They are all life, they all eat, defecate and reproduce, all have some sentience, what makes us better than them?
We cannot fathom just how infinitesimal we are. All 106,456,367,669 of us since the beginning. We think we are the be all and the end all. How stupid.
But we are less than nothing. Our essence is contained in the neurons and synapses in our brains, but there are about 70 thousand million million million stars that we can see, 10 times more than all sand grains on all the world's beaches - some think it is infinite. Most stars probably have planets, and some probably have life:
Our Milky Way galaxy contains about 300 billion stars, of which about 30 billion are like our Sun, and at least 1.5 billion theoretically have orbiting planets the size of Jupiter, and there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe.
There are more than one hundred thousand million sparrows. If his eye is really on the sparrow, then he doesn’t have time for the rest of us.

[logicanada]

12:28 PM on 11/15/2010

Religion is an unnatural act.

[Pandoras Folly]

01:32 PM on 11/15/2010

so is putting on shoes, lighting a fire using friction, alloying metals, constructing roadways, bioengineering crops, or hanging a picassoso what? humans do a lot of unnatural things, whats your point?

[logicanada]

04:51 PM on 11/15/2010

Let to his own devices man invented shoes, taught himself to make fire, forged metals and made roadways. The original shoe was conceived and designed by one thinking man to suit his purposes - as was fire, and roadways. The original man didn't do this with guidance from a god. God too was created by one man but god cannot be used to protect your feet, warm your cave or ease the transport of goods. All god can be used for is the division of peoples. Man is naturally a socially co-operative species. The formation of religion goes against this natural order and divides man. That's my point.

[ThinkCreeps]

04:20 AM on 11/16/2010

Isn't it strange that all over the world, shoes, fire, metals etc. are substantially the same, and yet within the same ethnic group you get ferocious fighting over who's got the best skyfairies?

I'm waiting for the first nike crusade to burn the families of those who pray to adidas.

[disgruntledprogressives]

01:43 AM on 11/15/2010

Call it for what it was: child rape.

[SilentSolidarity]

05:54 PM on 11/15/2010

This is too exclusive. Child abuse is the right term since they did a lot of inhumane, disgusting things.

[PeterOregon]

06:21 PM on 11/14/2010

The arrogance and cruelty of the Catholic clergy is matched in its evil only by the lay Catholics who ignored the obvious.

[MetrointheWoods]

05:08 PM on 11/14/2010

I wonder when the Irish Police Service will announce the scope of its abuse probe?

[moflard]

07:27 AM on 11/16/2010

And how about the *internal* probe into why they failed to investigate for so long?

[Aikaterina]

11:28 AM on 11/14/2010

Since the Catholic Church hierarchy has been sorely remiss and derelict in their duties with regard to child abuse by clergy, it would be far better to have lay persons do the investigating, including medical personnel (psychiatrists-doctors-counselors), legal experts (lawyers-cops), social workers, educators (all who could be Catholic, but far more objective) with clergy (NOT in leadership roles).

If the point of this "probe" is to find out what went on, who was involved, identify and help victims, allowing clergy (some who may be involved in other cover-ups of abuses) to lead these investigations will be counter-productive.

Unless & until the church exposes all involved in the abuses, including those who kept silent, consealed information, paid-off victims (to keep them quiet), arranged for transfers of priests suspected of abuses (creating more unsuspecting victims), and holds them fully accountable, including criminal prosecutions, their job will be but another white-wash.

[Kitten of D00M]

09:24 AM on 11/14/2010

If you just take a quick glance at the pic accompanying this story, it looks like the Pope is shagging a duck doggie-style. No really, take a look.

[moflard]

07:29 AM on 11/16/2010

OMG! You're right! Will their perverted urges never be satisfied?

[KudoM]

09:08 AM on 11/14/2010

The shame continues. Call for the prosecution of these pigs (sorry pigs), fund a study on Catholicisms role in the history of the rise of pedophelia, and commission a study on modern western religions and child abuse! You are revolting and have no claim to the legacy of the Christ!

[blue53]

08:45 AM on 11/14/2010

In addition to the priest abuse, will they probe why children went hungry, children were beaten, children were gang raped, and children went without the necessities of life in these "catholic" havens?

The reports from Ireland are some of the most disgusting words ever printed. You can't even read them completely--you get too sick. The offenders should be subjected to the same.

[ThinkCreeps]

07:02 AM on 11/14/2010

Let me help you out, ratzinger - the scope of the investigation?

About ten million children over 200 years.

[ThinkCreeps]

06:57 AM on 11/14/2010

I would have thought that was really a matter for the garda.

[josephXY]

01:40 AM on 11/14/2010

..."penitential activities" sponsored by Irish bishops, which include "prayer, fasting and
almsgiving."
Lets hope they are serious about that. Because that's absolutely necessary for the
Church going and faithful hypocrites who created the wall of silence during all that time,
making it so difficult for victims to have the complaints heard, get the police to investigate
and overall making it a virtue to turn a blind eye to such heinous crimes.