GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST:THE CATHOLIC Church is guilty of "a dereliction of moral responsibility and a grotesque neglect of vulnerable young people", gay rights activist Peter Tatchell said.
Mr Tatchell, speaking during the two-day Irish Peace Centre’s international exhibition and conference in Belfast, which ended yesterday, said the church leadership in Ireland was complicit with the cover-up of child sex abuse.
“They should all resign,” he said, adding that Pope Benedict XVI “should be put on trial” for a failure to defend children from clerical sex abuse.
He said he was not anti-Catholic and that a number of his inspirations were leading Catholics. “Dorothy Day, who edited the Catholic Worker in the US for many years; Archbishop Oscar Romero, who stood for the poor and homeless in El Salvador; and fathers Philip and Daniel Berrigan in the US, who for four decades have campaigned for peace and social justice – these are the Catholics with moral authority – not the Pope and his yes men,” said Mr Tatchell. He called the Vatican the “equivalent of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union – it is not accountable to anyone”.