Abused priest: Church has not learned a thing
An ex-priest who accused a cardinal of sexual misconduct claims lessons have not been learned from the scandal.
Brian Devlin and three serving priests made the claims against the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in 2013.
Cardinal Keith O’brien later apologised and resigned, saying his sexual conduct had “fallen beneath the standards” expected of him.
He initially contested allegations made against him.
Devlin has now written a book about his experience, entitled Cardinal Sin. Its release comes three years after Cardinal O’brien died, aged 80, after suffering a head injury in a fall.
He said he was training for the priesthood when he first met the man who would later become the UK’S most senior Catholic cleric.
Devlin described him as “very holy” but also “very funny” and “quite informal”.
He said that if he had raised concerns about the cardinal’s conduct towards him, he believed his dream of becoming a priest would have been “killed in its tracks”.
Devlin said he had written the book because there was no process in Scotland at the time for disciplining Cardinal O’brien. According to Devlin, the attitude was that “only the Pope can deal with a cardinal”. And he believes the church has not learned any lessons, despite an apology to child abuse victims in 2015.
The Catholic Church in Scotland said in response: “As the author correctly points out, organisations such as the church are run by humans and humans are flawed, which means that every human failing is present within the church.”