Priest Abusers – Page 151 – Hear Our Voices

March 16, 2013

The sorry tale of the Catholic Church in Scotland continues to unfold

By Alistair McBay

It seems there is no end to the woes of the Catholic Church in Scotland in the wake of Cardinal O’Brien’s abrupt departure.

The latest reports in the media examine the Scottish Catholic Church’s record on dealing with historic allegations of child sex abuse by clergy, with one former investigator hired by the Church in the mid-1990s now considering a formal request to the police to investigate the Church’s handling of abuse cases.

The revelations confirm the now all too familiar pattern of protecting the Church’s reputation first and foremost – allegations not taken seriously enough or simply dismissed, offending priests quietly moved to another parish where they could offend again, and the Church continuing to refer to the cover-up with euphemisms like “errors” in handling cases.

The Church’s first line of defence is to claim that it had tackled the problem when it introduced formal guidelines in 1999 for the protection of children. But it was only five years earlier that O’Brien’s predecessor Cardinal Winning had enraged lay Catholics by stating that it was up to the victims of abuse to go to the police, not the Church authorities. A spokesman for the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children observed at the time that the Church in Scotland had “dealt with this issue in a shabby, damaging and incompetent way.” There is now emergent evidence that Cardinal Winning’s view was the one that still retained currency after 1999.

It gets no better for the Church when the names of those dismissive of investigators’ concerns are recalled. The investigator appointed by the Church in the mid-1990s suggested that the investigation remit be widened to include “inappropriate relations” among the clergy. Given the recent revelations surrounding the ‘inappropriate behaviour’ of Cardinal O’Brien with young priests and seminarians, this suggestion seems to have been made with some merit. But Bishop Roddy Wright of Argyll and the Isles had, according to media reports, expressed his disquiet at this. Bishop Wright, we now know, resigned shortly after this in the mid-1990s when it became known he had fathered a child with a parishioner. He then abandoned his diocese and his vocation to marry a divorcee. No wonder the Bishop had been uncomfortable at the prospect of an investigation of ‘inappropriate relations’ among the clergy. It is not hard to see now that it may also have unsettled the then Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, one Keith Patrick O’Brien.

Bishop Wright was not alone in his disavowal of priestly celibacy. More recently we have had ‘Father Flash’ Roddy MacNeill from the island of Barra (who had an affair with his first cousin and is believed to be the father of her child) and Father Gerry Nugent who admitted to having sex with Angelika Kluk, (subsequently murdered by Peter Tobin who buried her body under the floor in Nugent’s church, St Patrick’s, where he had been working). There was also the case of Monsignor Creegan in the Diocese of Dunkeld, whose long-term mistress confessed to her affair with him after details of his illicit relationship with a second woman came to light.

So it would seem that the headline in the Daily Telegraph of 8 March that some Scottish priests under O’Brien’s watch were’out of control sexually’ would appear to be beyond challenge.

Another inconvenient truth for the Scottish Church is that you can have as many guidelines and policies as you want, but if bishops refuse to implement them, they are worthless. With the publication of the Nolan report in 2001, the Church boasted that its 1999 actions had preceded Nolan by two years, and claimed that “there is much sharing of information, expertise and resources among the eight Scottish Dioceses. There is also liaison between the Catholic and Reformed Churches in Scotland and a developing relationship with other Churches in Britain and Ireland.”

Was the Diocese of Cloyne in Ireland one of those with which this liaison occurred? For nowhere was the gulf between having procedures and actually putting them into practice more evident than in the case of Bishop John Magee in the Irish Diocese of Cloyne. Magee’s failures led to the Irish Government’s report revealing that the Vatican considered the Irish bishops’ child protection policies and guidelines to be a ‘study document’, not a definitive set of instructions and rules. This in turn led to the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s devastating speech in the Irish Parliament in 2011, when among other stinging criticisms of the Irish Catholic Church he noted the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children,” and this even after formal procedures had been put in place and reassuring noises as to future full compliance had been made.

Now it seems that a similar tale of guidelines and procedures being ignored has been the case in Scotland under His Eminence Cardinal O’Brien’s tenure. In 2004, five years after the introduction of child protection guidelines and seven years after the initial investigative report, the director of child protection for the Catholic Church in Scotland found the system in disarray.

In a detailed report on Scotland’s eight dioceses, carried out between December 2003 and March 2004, she found out that problem priests were inadequately supervised and potentially dangerous to children and young adults. The report, entitled A Review of Child Protection Practices, referred to the Church’s ‘secret archives’ and stated: “There is no consistent system of monitoring clergy who present, or may present, a risk to children. Active cases requiring some further action indicate that unacceptable levels of risk to children may have been and could remain present.”

She resigned after just four months, shortly after delivering her report to the Bishops. Further allegations of abuse are now appearing as more victims realise that they were not alone in being abused by Catholic clergy, nor alone in having their initial complaints summarily dismissed. As Cardinal O’Brien is alleged to have told one complainant at the time of his abuse by the notorious Father Lynagh, “you are just another abused child, no-one will believe you.” But times change.

Earlier this month, Lord McConnell, Scotland’s former First Minister, told of his regret that almost ten years on since he made a landmark apology to historic child abuse victims of the Catholic order the Sisters of Nazareth, the victims had yet to see redress. In an interview with BBC Scotland, Lord McConnell said there had been “absolutely no progress” on compensation for victims, and called on the Scottish Government to “do the right thing”.

As we await the inevitable media-inspired ‘Popefest’ this week from the Vatican, we wonder if the new Bishop of Rome will adopt a fresh approach to these issues and take on the Herculean task of cleansing the Catholic equivalent of the Augean stables. We wonder if the Church, whether globally or locally in Scotland, will at last grasp the full meaning of the words transparency and accountability. We wonder too if the Scottish Government will front up to the challenge of announcing a full inquiry of the sort announced last year by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Don’t anyone hold their breath.

Complete Article HERE!

March 16, 2013

Cardinal Keith O’Brien faces new abuse claims

By MARTYN McLAUGHLIN

A FORMER trainee priest is to take legal action against Cardinal Keith O’Brien after claiming the cleric abused, groped and kissed him during a visit to a seminary.

The ex-seminarian, who was a teenager at the time of the incident, alleges that the disgraced former Archbishop of St
Andrews and Edinburgh abused him after inviting him into his room following dinner for an alcoholic drink.

The victim’s solicitor said his client had been left “disturbed” by allegations surrounding the cardinal in recent weeks, which had “brought the past back.” He decided to come forward in the hope of encouraging any other victims to speak out.

The claims by the former trainee priest, now married with children, are separate from the allegations that the cardinal “behaved inappropriately” towards three priests and a former priest in the 1980s.

With the Catholic Church in Scotland left in turmoil following the events of the past three weeks, the latest revelations have cast further shadows over the Vatican and will put added pressure on Pope Francis to mount a detailed investigation into the beleaguered cardinal.

Since the initial raft of allegations were made against him, the 74-year-old has stood down as an archbishop, and apologised to the church and the country for his sexual conduct, which had, he said, “fallen below the standards expected” of a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

The cardinal, who turns 75 on Sunday, vowed to spend the rest of his life in retirement, with no further part in the public life of the church in Scotland. While he chose not to participate in the recent papal conclave he is still a cardinal, and the possibility remains that Pope Francis could strip him of his red mitre.

The man at the centre of the latest allegations left the priesthood months after the alleged incident of abuse in the 1980s. He had been attending a senior seminary college after spending four years at Aberdeen’s Blairs College, where the cardinal was rector between 1980 and 1985.

In an interview recalling the alleged abuse when he was 19, he said: “We’d have some sort of drink in his room, beer or wine. He was just chatting away about the past, the future, and so on. He had been talking about himself, how he was going places, his career had been mapped out and that it was for God to decide.

“I can’t remember the exact phrase he used but he told me he would always look after me and how good a priest I’d be. Until this stage I’d thought how excellent it would be to be a priest in his diocese.

“But that’s when it happened. After a few minutes he released me and I was able to make my excuses and go. As an adult looking back, I ask myself how it could have happened. Neither of us was drunk.”

The former priest, now in his 50s, has asked to remain anonymous because he has children. His solicitor, Cameron Fyfe, said he thought the incident had been isolated until the recent

allegations came to light.

Mr Fyfe told The Scotsman: “My client told me he found the recent allegations very disturbing and they brought the past back, and made him decide to do something about it. I think he also thought there are other victims out there, and if he was to speak then others might come forward.

Complete Article HERE!

March 7, 2013

Flocks and shepherds

As a conclave gathers to elect a pope, many in the Catholic church want change

WANTED: man of God; good at languages; preferably under 75; extensive pastoral experience; no record of covering up clerical sex abuse, deeply spiritual and, mentally, tough as old boots. It is a lot to ask, but that is the emerging profile of the man many of his fellow-cardinals would like to see replace Benedict XVI as the next pope.

On March 4th the princes of the church began a series of preliminary “general congregations”, the first step to electing a pontiff. They have much to discuss. After four sessions, they had still not—as expected—fixed a date for the Conclave, the electoral college, made up of cardinals below the age of 80, which will actually choose the next pope.

The papal spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the members of the general congregation, who include older cardinals, are not “hurrying things”. By March 6th, when they adjourned, the assembly had heard 51 speeches. As Father Lombardi tactfully put it, they spoke “freely and with rather effective colour”. That is code for candour—even bluntness. Indeed, given the crises the church faces, delicacy might seem remiss.

The procedure is usually to identify the main threats facing the church and then find the cardinal best able to deal with them. Of the subjects cited by Father Lombardi, half concerned the Vatican itself. Deeper questions include the loss of religious faith in Europe; the challenge from evangelical Protestantism in Latin America; persecution of Christians in the Middle East and clerical sex abuse. But none is as pressing as the turmoil in the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration.

Benedict, intellectually fearless yet personally timid, was unable to keep order. Many in Rome believe that was the true reason for his departure. The Curia has become a battleground. Prelates loyal to the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who in many cases were appointed by him or come from his native region of Piedmont, are at furious odds with papal diplomats who resented the appointment of a secretary of state with no knowledge of their business. Other feuds abound too. The leaking of documents by the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, though apparently motivated by genuine dismay at decisions taken in the Vatican, was entwined with this venomous plotting and squabbling.

Following the will of God
The findings of an investigative panel of three cardinals will cast a long shadow over the conclave. Last month an Italian newspaper wrote of a ring of gay prelates, some being blackmailed by outsiders. In the first general congregation, three cardinals—reportedly all Europeans—demanded (in vain) access to the findings. If the report will indeed be kept secret until it is handed to the new pope, it is unclear who made that decision. Secrecy fosters suspicions that the contents are dreadful.

The episode may also strengthen the resolve of the mainly English- and German-speaking cardinals who want a vigorous pope to clean up the Curia. This was last reformed under Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978. Cardinal George Pell, the burly archbishop of Sydney, said he wanted “a strategist, a decision-maker, a planner, somebody who has got strong pastoral capacities already demonstrated so that he can take a grip of the situation.”

For I have sinned

Among those watching the decision making in Rome with apprehension, fear and optimism is the Catholic priesthood. In many countries, their declining and ageing ranks are beset by the revelation of past scandals—both at the parish and at the top. This week Scotland’s most senior cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, admitted that his sexual conduct at times “has fallen below the standards” expected of him. A radio interview by his former counterpart in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, marked by a nervous laugh and opaque language, compounded the ire.

Victims of sexual abuse believe the reckoning has barely begun. They want not just proper investigation, but apologies and punishments—and in some cases cash. For them, Benedict exemplified the secretive, cautious response that aggravated the misconduct. It will be hard for any new pope to meet their expectations.

Along with frustrations of church politics and shame about misconduct, attendance at mass is falling. In America it has declined by over a third since 1960. In Britain data from the 2011 census show a similar trend, with numbers of Christians down 12 percentage points since 2001. Average Sunday attendance has fallen for the past 20 years. In mostly Catholic Italy only 39% attend on a monthly basis.

But parish life goes on. Timothy Radcliffe, the former head of the Dominican order, says priests are mostly happy, albeit overstretched. After a peak of 110 vocations in England and Wales in 1996, the figure dropped to a mere 19 in 2006. But this year 38 ordinations are expected. In a reversal of the old days of Western missionaries, many were born overseas. Father Stephen Wang, of Allen Hall seminary in London, counts men from Africa, India and Australia in this year’s cohort of 54.

Movements such as “Youth 2000” and World Youth Day encourage vocations through what has been called “evangelical Catholicism”, says Father Wang, in which the faith is “more confident” about presenting itself. Traditionalist groups such as the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter or the Institute of Christ the King are attracting younger members. The provost of the Brompton Oratory, a traditionalist church in central London, is Father Julian Large, a 43-year-old former journalist who draws a youthful following.

The brighter shore

In some respects the woes of the church in the West seem far away from the parts of the world where it is thriving. In a leafy sanctuary from the heat and frenzy of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s biggest city, Father Aurel da Silva sits under a tree on the tidy front lawn of a monastery. On the wall behind him hangs an oversize portrait of Michel Nielly, who a half-century ago established it as a beachhead for the Dominican order. Today it houses some 30 seminarians from across the region and its small wooden chapel attracts Abidjan’s elites for Sunday mass.

Near the guardhouse, employees raise money for local charities by selling mushrooms that grow in the monastery’s garden. Ceramic water filters distributed to the poor are also displayed prominently. A pink leaflet posted on a bulletin board advertises job-training programmes for unemployed youth. When violence engulfed Côte d’Ivoire after its disputed 2010 presidential election, the towering St Paul’s cathedral in the heart of Abidjan sheltered nearly 2,000 people.

The rapidly growing African Catholic church, says Father da Silva, has great ambitions as a social force. But autonomy must be the watchword. The doctrinal debates and papal intrigue in Rome hardly concern him. “I haven’t spent time in Rome, but I don’t need to,” he says. “What I do here is more important.”

Some of his seminarians have softer attitudes to the Vatican, but they insist that the church’s social message is secondary: spirituality comes first. The African church is no hotbed of liberalism. Its leading contender for the papacy, the Ghanaian cardinal Peter Turkson, is widely regarded as a conservative in the mold of Benedict.

But one of Father da Silva’s older colleagues stakes out a more radical position. The church must evolve, he says. His priorities are: the end of clerical celibacy, women’s ordination, and, above all, greater tolerance for dissent: “You have to accept other people’s way of thinking.”

Those views chime across continents and oceans. In the beautiful, desolate west of Ireland is the village of Moygownagh, the home parish of Father Brendan Hoban. He is a co-founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, which aspires to represent the 2m Irish people who attend mass at least once a month. It is campaigning for an end to celibacy, “inclusive ministry” (code for women priests) and a rethinking of sexual teaching, especially on contraception.

Nearly a quarter of Ireland’s 4,500 priests (and probably a higher share of its able-bodied, energetic ones) has joined. It is in touch with similar bodies in Austria, where a grass-roots initiative among priests incurred a papal rebuke last year, as well as France, the Czech Republic, Australia and the United States.

The Irish association has special credibility. It speaks for a country where the hierarchy is reeling from horrific revelations about abuse in church-run institutions and clerical cover-ups, but where the population, despite the onrush of secularism, remains relatively pious by the standards of the rich world.

The village exemplifies both the crisis and strength of Irish Catholicism. Half of its residents attend weekly mass and most of the remainder look to the church for rites of passage, from first communion to anniversary masses for the dead. Despite the recession, generous donations are paying for church refurbishment.

Moygownagh belongs to a small diocese with 32 priests serving 22 parishes; that number sounds high, and it reflects a flood of vocations in the 1960s and 1970s. But only seven priests are under 55. Father Hoban is nearly 65. When he retires, he expects that the village will be left without a priest of its own for the first time in centuries. In his parents’ time, he recalls, a local farming family would be proud if a son joined the priesthood. Now, he says, even a “faithful Catholic family might panic” if a son announced a similar vocation. “They would feel he was embarking on a life of stress, isolation and low social prestige.”

Almost all the church’s recent woes can be ascribed, in Father Hoban’s view, to the top-down decision-making which has marked the past two papacies. Like many Catholic liberals, he feels that the trouble started when the church hierarchy hijacked the devolutionary reforms of the second Vatican council and blocked change or implemented it badly.

The result, viewed from an Irish village, is that “Rome doesn’t listen to the national bishops; the bishops don’t tell Rome the truth because Rome doesn’t want to hear it; the bishops don’t listen to the priests, the priests haven’t listened enough to the people.” With lay involvement, the child-abuse cover-ups would not have happened. He does not want the church to be “literally democratic”, but nor should it “preserve structures inherited from the Roman empire.”

What do priests of his school expect from the conclave? “In some ways we don’t hope for that much, because all the cardinals have been appointed under the present order. But we hope that some can see the dysfunctionality of the Vatican in its present form…the cardinals need to bite the bullet and appoint somebody who can challenge the Curia.”

Complete Article HERE!

March 6, 2013

Strong policies on abusive priests vital, O’Malley says

Ya gotta love this guy!

By Lisa Wangsness

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said Tuesday that the next pope must make sure the Roman Catholic Church adopts measures to deal with bishops whose “malfeasance” allowed abusive priests to remain in ministry.

O’Malley said in an interview that the successor to Pope Benedict XVI will need to continue Benedict’s campaign to get bishops across the world to adopt policies for dealing with accused abusers. That should include procedures for disciplining bishops who protect abusive priests, said O’Malley, among dozens of cardinals gathered at the Vatican.

The US bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy on clergy sexual abuse a decade ago, requiring removal from ministry of any priest credibly accused of abusing a minor, but some church leaders have not followed it. The bishop of Kansas City was convicted last fall of failing to report child abuse by a priest, but the church has not sanctioned him.

“There needs to be a path” for disciplining bishops, O’Malley said. “Right now, it’s not terribly clear, but it’s something the next pope will have to deal with.”

Without a protocol in place, he said, it falls to the Vatican to decide what to do with each errant bishop on a case-by-case basis. “My point is always that if you don’t have policies, you’ll be improvising, and when you improvise, you make a lot of mistakes,” he said.

‘There needs to be a path’ for disciplining bishops. ‘Right now, it’s not terribly clear.’

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston discussed some of the issues at stake in the papal election in a brief interview Tuesday in a corridor of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, a peaceful hilltop seminary about 10 minutes by foot from the Vatican.

O’Malley is among the US cardinals staying there before the conclave. Once voting begins, the cardinals will move to lodgings within the Vatican and remain isolated from the world until they elect a pontiff.

The conclave is held in the Sistine Chapel, which closed at 1 p.m. Tuesday so that work crews could begin installing a raised floor, under which they will put antibugging devices, and the stoves in which the ballots will be burned.

O’Malley, who during the interview wore a gray cardigan over his hooded brown habit and blue socks peeking through his sandals, spent the morning in one of a series of meetings the cardinals are holding before the conclave, called general congregations, in which they discuss issues facing the church.

Being part of the papal process is “surrealistic,” he said, but also moving.

“Growing up a Catholic and knowing a little bit about these traditions and the way the Holy Father is selected in the church — it’s a far cry from seeing it up close and being part of it,” he said.

O’Malley also seemed to ache for a little down time. He had just finished a long press conference and had more reporters to speak with before a dinner with cardinals. He said he had not been able to spend much time going out to dinner or otherwise enjoying the city. “If I didn’t have all these interviews,” he said with a laugh, “I could be in a bookstore right now.”

Yet the shy O’Malley seemed at ease at the press conference. He said that after almost 30 years of being a bishop, he had grown accustomed to being the face of the church and interacting with the press. “It’s not always easy, but it’s important; it’s the way we can communicate with the largest number of people,” he said.

He has been highly sought after by the Spanish-speaking press because of his fluency in the language and his work with the Hispanic community in the United States and with the church in Latin America.

Asked in the Globe interview what he was looking for in a potential candidate, O’Malley said the next pope must “relate well to the universal church.” The Catholic Church is growing quickly in Africa, and more than 40 percent of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America.

He said Benedict’s successor also needs the spiritual and intellectual capacity to deal with the church’s many challenges. Governance of the Vatican, he added, is also an issue.

“We want the Holy Father to have a good team of people around him in a way that will support his ministry and allow him to focus on his teaching office, which we see as so important,” he said.

O’Malley has been deflecting a lot of questions lately about the possibility he could be a contender for pope. Most Vatican analysts consider the notion of an American pope a long shot, but some say that O’Malley’s chances could improve if there is no consensus after a few days of voting.

One reporter at the news conference said she had a question from her daughter: Would O’Malley continue to wear his “cappuccino robe” if elected pope? O’Malley, a Capuchin friar whose order’s name derives from the brown hooded habits its members wear, blushed and chuckled with his audience.

“I have worn this uniform for over 40 years, and I presume I will wear it until I die, because I don’t expect to be elected pope,” he said. He stammered slightly. “So — I don’t expect to have a change of wardrobe.”

The press conference focused on the general congregation meetings, a tricky subject, because the cardinals take oaths promising not to reveal the content of the discussions to outsiders.

As described by cardinals and Vatican representatives, there is little back and forth in these sessions. Cardinals sign up to speak and essentially make speeches without debate.

A half-hour coffee break gives the cardinals time to chat informally. Cardinals who are over 80 years old — the cutoff for being eligible to vote in the conclave — are invited to join the general congregations.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, who presided alongside O’Malley at the press conference, said the congregations were “pretty serene — it’s not campaign-like.”

The College of Cardinals has not yet set a date for the conclave, nor have cardinals decided when they will set a date. All electors must be present for the date to be set, and a Vatican representative said 5 of the 115 electors were not yet in Rome. Church law requires the conclave to begin no more than 20 days after a papal vacancy.

O’Malley said the cardinals want to be sure they allow themselves enough time to weigh issues and contenders before the conclave to make sure the voting itself does not “drag on.” All the conclaves in the last century have ended within five days; in earlier centuries, some voting sessions lasted for months or even years.

O’Malley and DiNardo said cardinals who, like themselves, were in charge of dioceses, hoped to return home by March 24 for Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. But they said the prelates do not want to rush. “This is the most important decision that some of us will ever make, and we need to give it the time that’s necessary,” O’Malley said.

He told the National Catholic Reporter Sunday that he hoped the cardinals would meet twice a day every day this week to move the process along. But Tuesday the cardinals decided against meeting twice that day, and they plan on meeting only during the morning Wednesday. O’Malley smiled a little tightly when asked about that. “This is Rome,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

March 4, 2013

O’Brien priest worries that church wants to ‘crush’ him

Key figure behind allegations of inappropriate behaviour attacks Catholic church’s response to complaints

By Catherine Deveney

A key figure behind allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Cardinal Keith O’Brien has launched a powerful attack on the Catholic church’s response to the complaints, saying he fears the church hierarchy would “crush” him if they could.

Last Sunday the Observer revealed that the former priest, along with three serving priests, had reported O’Brien’s behaviour to the Vatican, prompting the UK’s most senior Catholic to resign the following day. Now the former priest, who says he was the subject of unwanted attention by O’Brien when he was a 20-year-old seminarian, has come forward to explain why he made his allegations public and to lambast the Scottish church leadership’s reaction to last week’s story.

He is “disappointed” by the “lack of integrity” shown by the Catholic church. “There have been two sensations for me this week. One is feeling the hot breath of the media on the back of my neck and the other is sensing the cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks. I feel like if they could crush me, they would,” he told the Observer.

He added that he was shocked when Peter Kearney, director of communications for the church in Scotland, claimed O’Brien’s resignation was not linked to the Observer story and that the church did not know the details of the allegations.

Kearney said he was unable to comment on suggestions that a new complaint had been lodged as a result of last week’s story. When asked to outline the church’s programme of support for complainants, he said only that they would be directed to Antonio Mennini, the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain, to make a formal statement.

“The vacuum the church has created has allowed whimsy and speculation to distort the truth,” the priest said. “And the only support I have been offered is a cursory email with a couple of telephone numbers of counsellors hundreds of miles away from me. Anyway, I don’t need counselling about Keith O’Brien’s unwanted behaviour to me as a young man. But I may need counselling about the trauma of speaking truth to power.”

The former cleric says he feels that he, rather than the cardinal, has been the subject of scrutiny. “I have felt very alone and there is a tendency to become reclusive when people are trying to hunt you down.”

He said he felt particularly angered by demands that the identity of the four complainants be revealed: “To those who want to know my name I would say, what does that change? And what do you think I have done wrong?”

He said that when the four came forward to the church, they were asked to make sworn signed statements to Mennini. But they were also warned that if their complaints became public knowledge, they would cause “immense further damage to the church”. The church, he says, failed to act quickly and appropriately, adding that he fears the matter was in danger of being swept under the carpet.

“For me, this is about integrity. I thought it was best to let the men and women who put their hard-earned cash in the plate every Sunday know what has been happening. If you pay into something you have a right, but also a duty, to know what you are paying for.”

He said that the men’s complaints were not maliciously motivated. “I am as sinful as the next man – as my partner and pals frequently remind me. But this isn’t about trying to own the moral high ground. I feel compassion for O’Brien, more compassion than the church is showing me, but the truth has to be available – even when that truth is hard to swallow.”

He also dismissed suggestions that the accusations contain an element of homophobia. ” This is not about a gay culture or a straight culture. It’s about an open culture. I would be happy to see an openly gay bishop, cardinal, or pope. But the church acts as if sexual identity has to be kept secret.”

Complete Article HERE!