CATHOLIC PRIMATE Cardinal Seán Brady has welcomed yesterday’s call for an independent inquiry into Fr Brendan Smyth’s abuse of children in Ireland and elsewhere over a 40-year period.
A spokesman for the cardinal said last night that he “welcomed and supported” the proposal made by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.
Speaking after Mass at St Francis Xavier Church on Dublin’s Gardiner Street, Dr Martin said: “We’re getting all these bits and pieces of information about a horrible situation, what Brendan Smyth did to children.”
He believed “that until all of this story in its entirety comes out, we are not doing justice to those who were abused and we’re not really getting at the truth”.
He knew it wasn’t “fashionable today to talk about commissions, but I do really believe that an independent commission of investigation into the activities of Brendan Smyth, as to how he was allowed to abuse for so many years [should take place]. An independent commission, which would look North and South, church and State.”
Where Cardinal Brady was concerned, he said: “I’ve never called for anybody’s resignation. I’ve never done that. Everybody has to make their own decisions.”
He said: “I don’t know what the relationship between him and bishop [McKiernan of Kilmore] was. I don’t know what the bishop did, what he knew the bishop did . . . Looking back at the Dublin inquiry I’ve seen that these are complex questions and I wouldn’t like to judge a person on things that I don’t know.”
Commenting on Rome’s censuring of Irish priests, he said: “I believe, and I’ve said this before, we do need to have a way in which if things are said or written which go outside the realm of Catholic teaching, they should be resolved in an area of dialogue.”
The best way to do this would be to do it first of all in Ireland. “I think the theological commission of the Irish bishops has not carried out its function as in other countries where this dialogue would take place as a first stage and then be resolved without it necessarily being dealt with from Rome directly.”
