AN INDEPENDENT commission into the abuse of children by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth “North and South” would be in the public interest, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.
On Rome’s censuring of Irish priests, he felt that “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 with it necessarily being dealt with from Rome directly”.
He refused to call on Cardinal Brady to resign following revelations in last week’s BBC This World documentary.
“I’ve never called for anybody’s resignation, I’ve never done that. Everybody has to make their own decisions.”
Archbishop Martin was speaking yesterday after Mass at the St Francis Xavier Church on Dublin’s Gardiner Street. It marked the launch of Commemorative Eucharistic Congress Prayer, a booklet edited by Fr Donal Neary SJ, parish priest at Gardiner Street.
Dr Martin said: “I know it’s not 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 be set up.
It would look “North and South” at “church and State”.
He felt this would be in the public interest so that the full story would come out “and not the bits and pieces which either an investigative journalist or diocesan investigation”, would bring out.
As to Smyth being allowed hear confession again in Kilmore diocese from 1984, he said: “I find it very hard to justify. But I believe that the only way we’ll really get to understand that is if we have one global independent investigation.”
He said “that man did so much harm to people that I believe there is a public interest in this case to carry out an investigation of that kind . . . I believe 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 felt it only fair to point out that in a review by the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children last year Kilmore diocese was commended for the quality of its child protection services.
Where Cardinal Brady was concerned he said: “I don’t know what the relationship between him and the bishop 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 . . . it’d be unfair . . . to make that judgment.”
Division in the Irish church was “all over the place”, he said. In his homily at the Mass he spoke of “unhealthy divisions within the church. The church is called to be a sign of unity, yet this is not the witness that is being given of the church in today’s Ireland.”
He was also “saddened by some comments made in the public arena about Pope Benedict . . . there is no mention of the fact that Pope Benedict has . . . as pope written two extraordinary and striking books on Jesus Christ”.