ARCHBISHOP'S REACTION:THERE WAS "no division" among bishops about future child protection measures and the church must ensure no "slippage" in dealing with clerical sex abuse in the future, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said. .
Speaking for the first time since a meeting of 24 Irish bishops and Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, Dr Martin yesterday said a shared sense of concern about the handling of abuse had been expressed and each person needed to accept their specific responsibilities. “I believe the future of dealing with this question is in the hands of the Irish church.”
He added: “The Irish church has to have the strength to do that and there [must] be no slippage, no going backwards. We have robust child protection measures in place and there is no division among the bishops about those. We have the measures to ensure that if anybody fails it is noticed.”
Dr Martin described the meeting as “part of a process” of reconciling the issue of clerical child abuse. He said the process would be a long road involving a number of steps. “This is part of a process . . . Not everything happens the first time,” he said.
“It’s a long road of regret and repentance and that means addressing what happened in the past, what is happening today and also looking to the future to make sure that our structures continue to be as valid and robust as we want them to be.”
Dr Martin was speaking following an Ash Wednesday Mass at University College Dublin.
He told the congregation that even the structures and members of the church had in many ways been “unfaithful to their calling and have allowed personal and institutional reputation to influence their decisions”.
Survivors of clerical sexual abuse expressed dismay at the outcome of the clerical summit in Rome, claiming none of the substantive issues were addressed. They also noted that no apology had been issued from the Vatican.
Following the Mass, Dr Martin said the calling of the meeting and its tone “clearly stressed this was a moment of great concern” for the church. “There comes a time when repeating the word apology may even be empty. There was clear concern and the pope was distressed at what had happened, particularly in this diocese of Dublin as recorded in the Murphy report.
“He called this meeting to begin a process of seeing why didn’t we address the problems that were there and why did it happen and where we will go in the future.”
Dr Martin said messages from survivors of abuse had been given to the pope and there had been “no turning back” on the Murphy report – one of the requests made by survivors. “There was no denial of that whatsoever.”
He said the question of a meeting between the pope and the survivors of clerical sexual abuse had not been ruled out. “The pope has met with survivors in a number of countries. He has always done so rather quietly and has announced afterwards so as to avoid the fact this could become a media event rather than genuinely listening to people in the serenity a thing like that requires. Nothing is excluded.”
Dr Martin said he would be happy to meet survivors to discuss the answers he received to questions during the Rome meeting. He said a dialogue had begun with survivors’ groups and that he hoped they would not lose heart.
The pope released a statement following the meeting which said a “weakening of faith” had been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of children.
Dr Martin said he thought the pope was angry that such abuse had happened and that the comment referred to a weakening among those “men of faith” who abused children rather than in society as a whole. He said the issue of bishops resigning after the Murphy report was not discussed and was a matter for individual bishops and the pope.
Dr Martin would not be drawn on the position of Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan, who is the only one of the five bishops active at the time in Dublin not to have resigned.
He also said the papal nuncio’s rejection of an invitation to address the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs was not a matter for concern.
“The papal nuncio said he is well prepared to talk with his normal interlocutor which is the Department of Foreign Affairs . . . I believe that our own Department of Foreign Affairs is strong enough to ask the right questions and to get the answers.”
