Call for Apology Over Sex Abuse Cases in Ireland

Ireland's Catholic bishops and clergy were urged last night to follow Pope Benedict XVI's lead and publicly apologize to victims of clerical abuse.The abuse survivors' group One-in-Four said the Pope's strong words in Australia were not matched by the church's hierarchy in Ireland.

The Pope had used his visit to Australia to issue an apology for past crimes against children carried out by Catholic clerics. He told a gathering of Australian bishops and student priests that he was deeply sorry for clerical abuse and that those responsible must be brought to justice. But One-in-Four, which has worked with hundreds of those who have suffered, added that victims found it hard to accept that the Pope, and the clergy, shared in their suffering.

'The difficulty in terms of these apologies is when they are not demonstrated,' Deirdre Fitzpatrick, the charity's advocacy director, said. 'In our experience some people may receive it in a positive light but many, as was the case when the Pope made his apology in America, were deeply upset.

'They [victims] are not receiving any human response from the individual diocese or religious orders and they struggle then when they hear a Pope who says he is sorry and trying to make amends. While they have an apology, they may not experience that from some bishops.'

In the wake of a series of devastating clerical abuse scandals in Ireland through the Nineties, the country's Catholic bishops committed themselves to publishing how dioceses were handling the complaints. Fitzpatrick said very few of the 26 dioceses had done so.