BISHOP of Galway Dr Martin Drennan has reiterated that he will not resign in the wake of the Murphy report on clerical sexual abuse, and the pope did not ask for his resignation in Rome this week.
Bishop Drennan said yesterday there was “no collective responsibility” in the Dublin archdiocese when he was an auxiliary bishop and it “doesn’t exist now”.
He said that he respected “totally” the suffering of abuse victims, and did not want to “do anything that would cause any further suffering to those who have suffered hugely already”. However, a “huge injustice” had been “done already” and his resignation would be “another injustice”.
He believed Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin felt he had taken responsibility for his actions. Speaking to RTÉ, Bishop Drennan said there was “nothing” in the Murphy report that said he was in the same situation as the other four bishops mentioned, all of whom had resigned.
“The role of the auxiliary bishop was to support the decisions of the archbishop. All major decisions are made by the archbishop. We did not have access to the files or information on individual priests.”
In an interview with Galway Bay FM, Dr Drennan said he believed he had “tacit support” from bishops for his position.
“I think the general impression among the bishops and a lot of people I know is that resignations haven’t really helped. They’ve caused divisions rather than unity,” he said.
“It is important for the people of Galway now to know that I’m going to stay with the difficult time, the difficult task and I’m not going to run away from it because things are difficult.”
Dr Drennan said the bishops had been “very supportive” of his position, and he had been in contact with “every one of them”. “The most enjoyable card was from one of the auxiliary bishops who said if you survive this I’ll make you the patron saint of auxiliary bishops,” he said.
Uppermost in his mind, he said, was “what can we do here to bring healing to the victims, to bring this to a closure, to respect the injustices that have been done to them.I’ve met some victims here in Galway, I’ve talked to them, we’ve talked about possible ways of supporting them in a new situation,” Dr Drennan said. “We are looking at ways that we can provide something for them to help them get their lives back on track.”
“The listening process is terribly important as well,” he said. “What the victims are hoping for from Rome didn’t happen and there’s been a lot of comment in the public media about that.” Dr Drennan denied that the visit to Rome was a “PR exercise”. Bishop of Clonfert Dr John Kirby said he supported Dr Drennan’s stance.
Transcript of Bishop Drennan interview with Galway Bay FM on irishtimes.com