Vatican allowed pedophile to remain in priesthood, report says

Vatican allowed pedophile to remain in priesthood, report says
Dublin leaders had attempted to dismiss abuser
By Shawn Pogatchnik Associated Press December 18, 2010
DUBLIN — The Vatican prevented Dublin church leaders from dismissing a particularly dangerous pedophile priest and relented only after he raped a boy in a pub restroom, an investigation reported yesterday.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said he fully accepted the findings of the latest chapter in Ireland’s investigation into child abuse by Dublin priests who were shielded from the law by Catholic leaders.

Martin called Tony Walsh an “extremely devious man’’ who should never have been ordained a priest and said the report highlighted how the church had grown too powerful and arrogant in 20th-century Ireland.
A state-ordered investigation into Dublin Archdiocese coverups reported last year that Catholic officials had shielded scores of priests from criminal investigation over several decades and did not report any crimes to the police until the mid-1990s.

A chapter dealing with Walsh was censored from the original report because he was still facing a criminal trial. The Department of Justice published the chapter yesterday, following the 56-year-old Walsh’s Dec. 6 conviction for raping three boys over a five-year period three decades ago. He received a 12-year prison sentence.
The investigators concluded that Walsh raped and molested hundreds of boys and girls as a Dublin priest from 1978 to 1996, a reign of terror that church leaders never effectively stopped.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/12/18/vatican_allowed_pedophile_to_remain_in_priesthood_report_says/