Church should consider term limits for bishops

THE option of further costly, non-binding State inquiries, rather than prosecutions by the DPP, have been mentioned following the publication of the most recent reviews of child safeguarding procedures in six dioceses over a 34-year period.

Further state inquiries will achieve little if they were not to be accompanied by a contemporaneous systemic root and branch reform of the Church in Ireland by The Holy See.

While the six reviews did cite one bishop, Dr Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore as a role model exemplar, and several other bishops for being disciplined and constructive in their safeguarding obligations, the reviews also reveal a horrifying catalogue of dereliction, incompetence, delinquency and incapacity — euphemistically described as “errors of judgement”, which have further weakened the moral authority of the entire Church and impair the prospects of transparency and credible transformation.