Bishop criticises church responses

One of Ireland’s leading clergymen has criticised the response by the Catholic church to the way it has dealt with sexual abuse cases in some of its dioceses.

Bishop Willie Walsh, told a Sunday newspaper that the church in Ireland has relied too heavily on legal advice in the past.

The Bishop of Killaloe claimed that this in turn has hurt victims of sexual abuse and insisted that they only way to reconcile abuse scandals was to deal with them openly.

The senior Irish Bishop was criticising the church in the wake of pressure on the Bishop of Ferns Brendan Comiskey over the Fr Sean Fortune abuse scandal.