Brady admits Vatican’s attitude was ‘unhelpful’
Cardinal Sean Brady said he was deeply upset by the report’s findings. “It’s a very bad day,” he said outside the new Drumcree Pastoral Centre. “It saddens me greatly.”
He said he wanted to apologise to all victims of abuse and their families but pointed to a conclusion in the report that said the reporting guidelines did work when followed.
“If there is one positive thing to come out of it, it is the confirmation that these Church structures have been proven to be effective,” he said.
Cardinal Brady was also pressed to explain why he had initially backed Bishop John Magee when the claims surrounding Cloyne, in particular one against the cleric himself, emerged in 2008 and 2009.
The cardinal said he wanted the bishop to remain in his post so he could face up to the allegations.
“I regret any hurt or any misunderstanding that that caused people, because I wanted him not to resign and not to run away but to stay and face his responsibilities,” he said.
The country’s most senior Catholic cleric acknowledged criticism levelled at the authorities in Rome.
The inquiry lambasted the Vatican for referring to mandatory guidelines for reporting abuse, drawn up in the mid-1990s, as merely a study document. It said this approach had effectively given Bishop Magee carte blanche to ignore the new protection framework in Cloyne.
“The Vatican’s attitude then was not helpful,” he said.
“But since then we have had the pastoral letter from the Holy Father last year which urges us to co-operate with the civil authorities, with our national board, and that’s the line we are following very much at the moment.
“We introduced our guidelines and have been doing our best to have those guidelines implemented ever since because we felt what was best for the safeguarding of children was best for everybody,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has come under pressure from Cabinet colleagues to summon the Pope’s Irish ambassador over Rome’s role in the Cloyne scandal.
Justice Minister Alan Shatter said the intervention by the then papal nuncio — who he described as an ambassador from a foreign state — was unacceptable when the country was given assurances the Church had implemented new child protection guidelines.
Mr Shatter said it was a matter for Mr Gilmore to “have a conversation” with the papal nuncio.
Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald also turned on the Vatican for being “singularly unhelpful”.
“When the Irish Church sought to apply guidelines to prevent it happening again, the Vatican told its clerics that those guidelines were not what they appeared,” she said.
