POLITICAL LEADERS from across the party spectrum have called on Cardinal Seán Brady to consider his position following allegations that he failed to pass on information about the activities of notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
Senior figures, including Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and the leaders of all the major parties, have responded to the disclosures in a BBC documentary by indicating it raises questions as to the cardinal’s tenability as Primate of All-Ireland.
The BBC This World documentary, The Shame of the Catholic Church, disclosed how a church inquiry in 1975 involving Dr Brady, then a priest, was given the names and addresses of children who Smyth abused. This information was never given to the children’s parents or gardaí.
Mr Gilmore said it was the State’s job to enact laws and to ensure those laws applied to everybody, whether they belonged to a church or not. “It is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,” he told the Dáil.
The Taoiseach stopped short of calling for Dr Brady to consider his position. He said, however, that the cardinal should “reflect” on the outcome of the programme.
Asked if he believed the cardinal should resign, Mr Kenny said he was in a “different position” than others, as he was head of Government, but said his views were well known.
Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said the Catholic Church, as patron of 92 per cent of Irish primary schools, needed to ask itself was Dr Brady a suitable person to be its head in Ireland.
“I think anybody who is aware that a crime had been committed against young men, a crime of rape, and who at the time, no matter what else was going on, did not report that to the gardaí, in the light of what has since happened, I think really should consider their position,” said Mr Quinn.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin echoed the sentiment, saying the enormity and scale of Smyth’s abuse of young children in very vulnerable circumstances meant Dr Brady should consider his position. “His authority has been very seriously undermined by what has happened.”
Mr Martin said it was “always easier for people of my generation to revisit the ’70s through the prism of the criteria and standards we apply today”.
The North’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, said when the issue first emerged two years ago he had said Dr Brady should consider his position. He said many Catholics would be “dismayed” at the new allegations and Dr Brady should reflect on his stated position that he will stay on as leader of his church in Ireland.
SDLP leader Alasdair McDonnell said Dr Brady had in 2010 set out criteria for judging when he should resign over failure to act. “In the minds of many Catholics, those criteria have been met,” he said.
Cardinal Brady has criticised elements of the documentary and complained it “deliberately exaggerated” his role as a member of a 1975 church inquiry team. He has claimed his role was confined to that of notary or note taker. He also said the programme makers had not carried the verdict of a senior Vatican investigation exonerating his role.
He said he would not be standing down over the issue but acknowledged: “I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past.”
Last night, professor emeritus of moral theology at St Patrick’s College Maynooth Fr Vincent Twomey said Cardinal Brady should resign. Speaking on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme, he said he “had unfortunately lost his moral credibility”.
Fr Twomey queried: “Where is the humanity, the imagination that can’t realise that these children have suffered so much?”
“For the good of the church, I’m afraid I am of the opinion that I think he should resign,” he said.
