THE CATHOLIC primate Cardinal Seán Brady has said he does not intend to resign following weekend revelations about his involvement in a 1975 canonical inquiry into child sex abuser Fr Brendan Smyth, about whom he did not inform gardaí.
Twenty years later, Smyth pleaded guilty to 74 charges of sexually abusing children between 1958 and 1993. Sentenced to seven years in prison, Smyth (70) died in jail in 1997.
Yesterday Cardinal Brady denied he helped to cover up cases of alleged sex abuse of children in the diocese of Kilmore 35 years ago and insisted he would not resign.
The Catholic primate of all-Ireland was a priest and a teacher in Kilmore when he was asked to interview two children, under oath of secrecy, by the then bishop Dr Francis McKiernan. He said these interviews formed the basis of the action taken to remove Smyth from pastoral ministry, adding that he was not the “designated person” to report the issue to the civil authorities.
Church sources insisted yesterday that the first State guidelines on the issue came into effect in 1987, some 12 years after these cases. They also stressed that the actions of the then Fr Brady were limited to the interviews of a boy (10) and a girl (14).
Cardinal Brady insisted that responsibility for Smyth was with the head of Smyth’s religious order at the Co Cavan abbey where he was sent after he was stripped of pastoral duties as a priest. “The responsibility for his behaviour rested with his religious superior at Kilnacrott,” he said.
The cardinal said he did all that was asked of him by Dr McKiernan in relation to Smyth.
“I did act, and act effectively, in that inquiry to produce the grounds for removing Fr Smyth from ministry and specifically it was underlined that he was not to hear confessions and that was very important.”
In his Archdiocese of Armagh yesterday, the cardinal outlined his role and Dr McKiernan’s in the affair.
"He set up a canonical inquiry to establish firm grounds for removing the faculties, the licence to minister, from Fr Brendan Smyth," Cardinal Brady told The Irish Times. "It took the form of a question-and-answer sequence under oath before a notary. I was that notary and I didn't have any decision-making power in it."
He denied the oath of secrecy, which was agreed to by the two young people he interviewed, was for the protection of the church.
“The reason for the oath was to give it [the interview] credibility and strength in law and robustness against any challenge [from Smyth] because he [Dr McKiernan] was going to use the evidence which this inquiry would produce to take disciplinary action. That inquiry got under way. Within the space of two weeks, three weeks, he had the firm reasons he wanted to remove Fr Brendan Smyth from pastoral ministry.”
Last night abuse victims Marie Collins, Colm O’Gorman and Andrew Madden all called on the cardinal to resign. He had “lost all moral authority or credibility”, Ms Collins said. “He knew in 1975 that Brendan Smyth was a child abuser but remained silent for the next 20 years . . . ” she said. The remit of the Murphy commission “must now be extended to every diocese in the country”.
Mr O’Gorman said his “reported defence of ‘I was following orders’ is a disgraceful attempt to further abdicate responsibility for his own failures to do the right thing back in 1975 and act to protect children from a known serial abuser”.
Mr Madden said the weekend revelations brought to five the number of those Irish bishops “known to have been involved in the cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by priests, either by acts of commission or omission.” He queried why none had been asked “to remove themselves from any role within our health and education services then the State”.