Irish church leaders defend Connell’s record on abuse

THE DEATH of Cardinal Desmond Connell has reignited the debate over the Vatican’s role in the mishandling of cases of clerical sexual abuse, writes Sarah Mac Donald.

Ahead of the funeral the former Archbishop of Dublin, Bishop Eamonn Walsh, an auxiliary in Dublin, recalled how Cardinal Connell had spoken up “with passion and courage” as he challenged Vatican officials over abuse protocols at a meeting in Rosses Point in 1997. The cardinal is reputed to have thumped the table in frustration with the then prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos.  

The incident emerged in an RTÉ documentary Unspeakable Crimes in 2011, which revealed that the Congregation directed the Irish bishops not to enforce a new policy calling for mandatory reporting of priests who had sexually abused children. Speaking to The Tablet after the cardinal’s funeral at St Mary’s Pro Cathedral, papal nuncio Archbishop Charles Brown recalled seeing him in Rome “filled with anguish about the horrors of the sexual abuse of children”. “The evil” of child sexual abuse was “inconceivable and unfathomable” to him and “it took a toll,” Archbishop Brown said.