Seniors clerics meet to discuss report

THE country’s senior clerics will meet today for the first time following the devastating findings of the Murphy report, amid growing calls for the Irish Bishops’ Conference to acknowledge the role they played in failing to tackle child sex abuse.

The Conference of Bishops will meet in Maynooth today and again tomorrow to discuss the Murphy report. It was also reported yesterday that Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and Cardinal Sean Brady will meet Pope Benedict this Friday, as had been expected, to talk about the fall-out from the report.

As the bishops met yesterday, however, victims support group One In Four said it was time for the Conference of Bishops to also acknowledge that it was “part of a widespread, systemic cover-up of clerical sex abuse that extends far beyond Ireland right up to the Vatican.