The Church must ‘get it’ or its future here is bleak
IFIRST met notorious clerical child abuser Fr Tony Walsh in June 1984 when, without warning or request, he arrived in our house in Ballyfermot offering to perform the funeral service for my father who had died two days previously. We knew he was a priest of the parish but had no contact with him previously. In fact a priest friend of our family was already enlisted for the obsequies.
It was only when I read the Murphy Report into clerical abuse in the Dublin diocese in 2009 that I realised Walsh had used funerals as opportunities to abuse children.
Walsh was on my mind this week when I was reading the grand jury report into clerical abuse in the six dioceses in Pennsylvania, published only last week.
The Pennsylvania report, which reported that 1,000 children were abused by 300 priests, and the Murphy Report are almost identical documents – with two exceptions. Priests are named in the American report; they had their identity protected in the Irish document. And the number of abusers in Dublin was, apparently, much lower – although Archbishop Diarmuid Martin revealed at the World Meeting of Families this week that he believed many victims in his diocese have never come forward.
AYEAR after my father died, Walsh was transferred from Ballyfermot to the parish of Westland Row in Dublin city centre. We didn’t know that he had been the subject of numerous allegations of abuse, which Walsh later admitted, but the diocese decided to give him a ‘second chance’. Indeed the then-archbishop of Dublin Kevin McNamara wrote to Walsh: ‘I take this opportunity to thank you for your dedicated work in Ballyfermot.’
In Pennsylvania, bishops were operating a similar policy of secrecy and transfer of abusers, and writing uncannily similar letters to them. One bishop wrote to a priest who admitted raping a girl, who became pregnant, and organising an abortion for her: ‘This is a difficult time in your life and I realise how upset you are. I too share your grief.’ The victim did not get a letter. As the Murphy report stated, the Church policy on abuse was ‘denial, arrogance and cover up’.
This, we now know, was not just the policy of the Irish hierarchy – it is a worldwide problem.
This is one of the many reasons why this weekend’s visit of Pope Francis has taken on a completely different tone and meaning in Ireland – as will be witnessed by the protests today in Dublin and Tuam, and by the smaller number of people attending the events than greeted Pope John Paul II in 1979.
In one weekend in September 1979, more than 2.4 million Irish people came out to greet the first Polish pope. Those events were characterised by outpourings of joy and great fervour.
The organisers for Pope Francis’s visit have managed the crowd well, insisting on a limit of 500,000 in the Phoenix park today – and, like all major events of this magnitude when the State agencies come together, it will be done superbly.
I was quite struck in the past two weeks by the number of people who surprised me by revealing that they had no intention of attending any Papal event this weekend – most of them, of all ages, citing clerical sex abuse and the cover-up as the reason for their absence.
That said, the hundreds of thousands attending the Papal events are doing so with enthusiasm, goodwill and a great sense of Christian community.
This weekend has emerged as a crucial crossroads for the Roman Catholic Church. Events have conspired to lay the abuse scandals at the centre of the visit. Pope Francis must now step up to the mark. Not since Mikhail Gorbachev broke up the Soviet Union in 1991 has a world leader faced such a gargantuan task. Indeed a year after becoming leader of the USSR, Gorbachev realised that his efforts to change were coming to nought when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. He knew he was being lied to and accused his administration of being ‘dominated by servility, bootlicking, cliquishness and persecution of those who think differently’. Gorbachev realised that Chernobyl proved that ‘the old system had exhausted its possibilities’. He then decided he must act radically. He did, to his cost, but the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 25, 1991.
The clerical abuse scandal is Pope Francis’s Chernobyl. The only difference is that the Pope is more powerful in the Catholic Church
than Gorbachev ever was in the USSR.
One cleric who will emerge with credit from the Papal visit is Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who should be elevated to cardinal before he reaches retirement age in two years.
He will then be able to vote in a Papal conclave up to age 80. Indeed he could even be a candidate! Maybe Pope Francis will take him back to Rome to vigorously lead Vatican action on clerical sex abuse and cover-ups.
However there is only one Irish cardinal at the moment, Seán Brady, who resigned under a cloud in 2014. Nevertheless, he is still a prince of the Church and has never been brought to book for his role in the 1975 Church inquiry into the abuse by notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
Not only did Brady know of the abuse and the names of victims who were sworn to secrecy, he did not report Smyth to the police authorities.
Smyth went on to abuse children for another 20 years. As for Tony Walsh, he was eventually sentenced to 123 years for his horrific trail of abuse – he will serve 16 of them.
But one of the senior clerics of the diocese, who admitted to the Murphy Report ‘that he evaded telling gardaí of Walsh’s previous offences’ was, as recently as last month, giving lectures in preparation for the World Meeting of Families. More evidence – if needed – that the Church authorities still don’t get it.
Maybe they will get it this momentous weekend. If not, the future of the leadership of the Catholic Church in Ireland is bleak.
Joe Duffy will broadcast from the Papal Mass at the Phoenix Park on RTÉ Radio 1 from 2-6pm