Irish bishop resigns, Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse

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Irish bishop resigns, apologizes to abuse victims By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/24/10
DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police. Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987....Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday's unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.

Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago. Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.

The church and government suppressed publication of that report's findings until December 2008, when Magee faced immediate calls to quit from victims' rights activists and some parishioners. They accused him of ignoring an Irish church policy enacted in 1996 requiring all abuse cases to be reported to police....Cardinal Sean Brady, a Vatican-trained canon lawyer, faces his own cover-up accusations. He has admitted collecting evidence in 1975 from two altar-boy victims of a notorious pedophile priest — but had both boys sign confidentiality agreements and never passed his information to police. That priest, Brendan Smyth, wasn't imprisoned until 1994 after molesting scores of children in Ireland and the United States....The church's Cloyne report found that Magee and his diocesan deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two priests from 1995 onward — but told the police nothing until 2003 and little thereafter. The report said Cloyne church authorities appeared solely concerned with helping the two priests, not protecting children of the diocese.

One priest, who was accused of molesting a younger priest when he was a teenager, was encouraged by Magee to resign. But the investigation found that the bishop shielded the abuser's identity from police — and considered such concealment "the normal practice" for the church.
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Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse 24 Mar 2010 Following recent revelations of sexual abuse in Catholic Church, Germany is setting an expert panel to discuss sex crimes in the country....Merkel has said that the panel should examine past abuse cases and reevaluate Germany's limitations on sex crimes as well as possible compensation for the victims. Since January, several Catholic-run institutions in Germany have been engulfed in a deepening scandal over allegations of sadistic and sexual abuse, with more than 150 pupils coming forward with horrifying tales of mistreatment, mostly during 1970s to 80s. German Catholic Church is dealing with 300 alleged cases of child abuse across the country, many of which were reported in regions where Pope Benedict served as an archbishop. Vatican is accused of building up a "wall of silence" around such issues after it ordered Catholic priests in 2001 to report 'priestly misbehaviors', even the most serious abuse cases, only to the Vatican. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=121572