Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011.[1][2] This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.[3][4]

Like the Catholic Church sex abuse cases in the United States and elsewhere, the abuse in Ireland included cases of high-profile, supposedly celibate Catholic clerics involved in illicit heterosexual relations as well as widespread physical abuse of children in the Catholic-run childcare network. In many cases, the abusing priests were moved to other parishes to avoid embarrassment or a scandal, assisted by senior clergy. By 2010 a number of in-depth judicial reports had been published, but with only a limited number of criminal convictions.

In March 2010, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology for all of the abuse that had been carried out by Catholic clergy in Ireland.[5] On 31 May 2010, Benedict established a formal panel to investigate the sex abuse scandal, saying that it could serve as a healing mechanism for the country and its Catholics. Among the nine members of the apostolic visitation were Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, the Archbishop of Boston (he investigated the Archdiocese of Dublin); Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, the Archbishop of New York (he investigated the issue of proper priestly formation and visited the seminaries); two nuns (who investigated women's religious institutes and the formation there), Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, England; Archbishop Terrence Thomas Prendergast of Ottawa, Canada; and Cardinal-Archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins of Toronto, Canada. In August 2018, a list was published revealing that over 1,300 Catholics in Ireland were accused of sexual abuse and 82 of them were convicted.[6][7]

  1. ^ "Timeline: 85 priests were accused of abuse". BBC. 30 November 2011. Archived from the original on 30 June 2014. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  2. ^ "Timeline: National Board for Safeguarding Children". www.safeguarding.ie. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  3. ^ Fitzgerald, Frances (10 March 2015). "Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015: Second Stage". Dáil Éireann debates. Archived from the original on 9 May 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  4. ^ "Current Referendum - Referendum on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018". Referendum Commission. 25 May 2018. Archived from the original on 28 May 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC 20 March 2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Call to name and shame abusive clergy". www.irishexaminer.com. 21 August 2018. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  7. ^ Fahey, Seán. "List of 80+ Irish paedophile priests published online". Buzz.ie. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 31 March 2019.