Cardinal
Seán Brady's career was marred by played part in clandestine deal to silence
victims of paedophile priest
theguardian.com,
Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent, Monday 8 September 2014
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the leader of the Catholic church in Ireland, Seán Brady. (pictured) Photograph: Paul Faith/PA |
The leader
of the Irish Catholic church, who resisted calls to resign when details emerged
of a secret deal between the church, child sex abuse victims and one of the
country's most notorious paedophile priests, has announced his retirement.
Cardinal
Seán Brady said he offered Pope Francis his resignation after turning 75, the standard
retirement age in the church, and would be replaced as Catholic primate of all
Ireland by archbishop Eamon Martin.
Brady's
reign as the spiritual leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics was marred by
revelations that he played a part in a clandestine deal to silence two young
victims of Father Brendan Smyth.
Brady was
the church's note-taker during the meeting with the two victims, who were
encouraged to swear oaths of secrecy about Smyth's abuse. Smyth went on to
abuse dozens of other children across Ireland and even the United States until
he was finally unmasked as a serial paedophile in the early 1990s.
Despite
being part of the Catholic church's investigation team in 1975, Brady never
revealed his role in the affair until it was exposed by Dublin journalist Jim
Cusack in 2009.
During his
years of silence about the deal with the two victims, the Irish Catholic church
faced a deluge of scandals about other paedophile clerics who used their
position in homes, orphanages, church-owned buildings, schools and youth clubs
to abuse children.
In his nine
paragraph statement on Monday announcing his retirement, Brady made no
reference to the Smyth scandal.
Brendan
Boland, who revealed that he was one of Smyth's victims and part of the secret
deal, said on Monday that Brady was not resigning but rather retiring "as
if he has done nothing wrong".
A number of
other former victims of clerical sex abuse such as Colm O'Gorman, now an author
and prominent figure in Amnesty International Ireland, demanded that Brady
resign in 2009 when the story about his role in the Smyth affair broke.
The new
head of the Catholic church in Ireland paid tribute to his predecessor.
Martin
praised Brady for "his tireless commitment to representing the Catholic
church in Ireland at countless national and international engagements".
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