Child protection findings 'appalling' - Diarmuid Martin

It was “appalling” that some major religious congregations had delayed in fully implementing the Irish Catholic Church’s child protection guidelines and that “in some cases this process only really got under way in 2013”, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

The delays had left him “seriously concerned”.

He said: "The failure of any single Church organisation to implement the common norms casts a shadow over the credibility of the entire safeguarding efforts of the Catholic Church. " It was also an affront to Pope Francis, he said.

Archbishop Martin was responding to findings in the latest, seventh tranche of reviews from the Church's child protection agency, the Maynooth-based National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC).

Published on Tuesday, it followed reviews of child safeguarding practices in nine religious congregations, eight of them male, and reports on eight further smaller female congregations with limited ministry to children and against whom no child abuse allegations had been made.

NBSC chief executive Teresa Devlin said they were "disappointed that for the majority of Orders, the whole area of safeguarding is only being embraced in the last couple of years".

‘Work to be done’

Where seven of the male congregations were concerned, she said “there is considerable work to be done”.

She was referring to the Franciscan Friars, Franciscan Brothers, the Servites, Passionists, Augustinians, Discalced Carmelites and the Marist Fathers.

In a statement, Archbishop Martin said some of the results of the latest tranche of reviews “leave me seriously concerned. It is appalling to read reports in the reviews concerning the delays by some major religious congregations in fully implementing the long-established standards and guidelines of the Irish Church.”

The reviews “indicate that in some cases this process only really only got under way in 2013”, he said.

He continued that: “For almost 20 years now, the Catholic Church has espoused what is called a ‘one-church policy’ to child safeguarding, involving common norms and common commitment by dioceses and religious congregations. The failure of any single Church organisation to implement the common norms casts a shadow over the credibility of the entire safeguarding efforts of the Catholic Church.

“ Survivors trying to regain their confidence in the Church will be disillusioned once again. The many lay men and women who work voluntarily in Church safeguarding structures in our parishes must feel disheartened.”

‘Direct affront’

It was “a direct affront to the desire of Pope Francis, repeated only one week ago, when he wrote that: ‘Families need to know that the Church is making every effort to protect their children’.”

What the reviews found was "of particular concern for the Archdiocese of Dublin, where hundreds of priests from outside the diocese, from other dioceses and religious congregations play an active role in many aspects of Church life", he said.

It was his intention to meet superiors of all the religious congregations working in parishes in Dublin “to verify once again the commitment of all these congregations to scrupulously applying the diocesan child safeguarding norms in every aspect of parish life”.

He congratulated the NBSC “for rendering an invaluable service through its reviews” and his hope was that it would “soon be able to complete the current cycle of the audit process with the participation of every congregation”.