The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church - 60 Minutes - CBS News

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church - 60 Minutes - CBS News
March 4, 2012
The Dublin archdiocese refused to turn over records on priests who abused children, that is until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop. Bob Simon reports.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400874n

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church - CBS News
March 4, 2012
(CBS News) An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin says the Catholic Church in Ireland has reached a breaking point, a crisis that he says results from the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church. Martin has provided tens of thousands of pages of evidence against specific priests, and his words and actions carry extraordinary weight. That's because Diarmuid Martin is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Bob Simon reports....

For decades, the outrage was covered up and the priests were largely protected. An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin would not disagree with any of this. He has dared to publicly criticize the Church, and his words carry a lot of clout because Diarmuid Martin is the archbishop of Dublin....

Archbishop Martin:....There's overwhelming evidence that the Church hierarchy was not only aware of the sexual abuse, but did little about it. The Dublin Archdiocese knew who the predator priests were, even wrote reports about them but then locked up the files. Investigators on a state panel, the Murphy Commission, asked for the files, but the Church refused until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop.

Martin: I provided the Murphy Commission investigation into Dublin Diocese over 65,000 documents. And the material was there. It was in my archives.

The documents revealed that one priest admitted abusing over a hundred children. Another said he abused children twice a month for 25 years. Archbishop Martin believes thousands of children suffered similar fates.

Martin: Abuse isn't-- it isn't-- it isn't just the, you know, the actual sexual acts, which are horrendous, but sexual abuse of a child is-- it's a total abuse of power. It's actually saying to a child, "I control you." And that is saying to the child, "You're worthless."....

Patsy McGarry is the religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times. He says other high-ranking figures in the church have been directly tied to the cover-up....

Including Archbishop Martin's superior, Cardinal Sean Brady. When he was a young priest, Brady interviewed two teenagers who'd been abused by a priest. Twenty years later, when one of them sued the Church, it was revealed that Brady had ordered him to remain silent.

McGarry: He met those young people, he believed those young people, he swore them to secrecy as part of the canon law investigation process. He never informed the police, he never informed the health authorities. He informed nobody in civil society.

Just last November, the church agreed to a secret financial settlement in Dublin High Court. Cardinal Brady has apologized for his actions and said he was ashamed he did not uphold the values he believes in. The priest he helped protect went on to abuse 20 more children....

The Vatican, says Patsy McGarry, also overruled Archbishop Martin's suggestion that two bishops associated with the scandal step down....

Martin: There's a real danger today of people saying-- "The child abuse scandal is over. Let's bury it. Let's move on." It isn't over. Child protection and the protection of children is something will go on-- for-- for-- you know, for the rest of our lives and into the future. Because the problems are there.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390125/