A spokesman for the Catholic bishops has said it is the practice in some of the Church's 26 dioceses in Ireland to use money collected at Masses for sex abuse compensation purposes. The money was also used to fund the Church's Child Protection Office at Maynooth, as well as for counselling and pastoral care for abuse victims, he said.
It had been agreed by the bishops that each diocese would contribute to the Church's Stewardship Fund, set up for compensation and allied purposes in 1996, he said. Some dioceses sold property to raise such funds, while others used both money from collections and property sales to do so. He was unable to say which dioceses did which.
He was speaking as a chorus of protest greeted the news that the Bishop of Derry, Dr Séamus Hegarty, had placed a 3 per cent levy on collections per year in each parish there, to raise money for the fund. He had not informed parishioners that the money would be used for compensation purposes.
The matter was disclosed in a BBC Spotlight programme, broadcast on Tuesday night, in which Bishop Hegarty agreed such a levy on collections was in place in Derry diocese and that it had committed itself to raising £200,000 a year for five years towards the Stewardship Fund.
Parishioners expressed their anger on the programme and again on Radio Foyle yesterday. They protested that they had not been informed money they contributed was being used for compensation purposes and queried why they should have to pay for the mistakes of Church leaders.
The spokesman for the bishops was unable to say last night what each diocese was expected to pay into the Stewardship Fund.
