Diarmuid Martin: Immense progress is being made against paedophilia

The fact that a dozen paedophile priests were active in Dublin in the 1970s has been described by the city’s Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as a tragedy.

That child sex abuse took place to such an extent within the Church as it did historically was inexcusable, he said. But while immense progress is being made in Ireland to deal with the issues, Archbishop Martin said there was a very strange situation in which people did not seem to realise the dangers of allowing abusers move around.

“The statistics will tell us that the number of paedophiles in society always remains the same,” Archbishop Martin told RTÉ radio’s This Week programme.