Tuesday March 09 2010

A NOTORIOUS paedophile priest named in the Murphy report on clerical sex abuse has spoken out to dispute its findings.

Bill Carney (60) made the comments after being tracked down by the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ TV programme while he was taking a sun holiday in the Canary Islands.

Carney, who was named as one of the worst serial offenders in the Murphy report, pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assaulting altar boys in 1983.

He was kicked out by the Catholic Church in 1992 after being found guilty under canon law of child sex abuse.

Carney later moved to the UK and settled in St Andrews in Scotland, where he got married.

The Murphy report stated that there were complaints or suspicions against him in respect of 32 named individuals.

In a ‘Panorama’ programme, being broadcast this evening, Carney disputes these findings.

“I have read the Murphy report six or seven times,” he told reporter Olenka Frenkiel.

“And I would dispute all of it except that I pleaded guilty to two charges in 1983 and the matter was dealt with by the court and I was sentenced.

“It is now 26 years later and I continue to get my life back together one day at a time and that is all I have to say.”

In the programme he is confronted with the fact that Paul Dwyer, one of his alleged victims, committed suicide in 2004, not long after making a complaint to gardai.

“I’ve no comment to make,” he said in response to those allegations.

He also denies being responsible for any instance of abuse since his conviction.

“I haven’t done that in 26 years and I have had no inclination.”

Pyschopathic

He refused to confirm or deny whether he abused other children before the 1983 case.

The Murphy report quoted a psychiatric assessment diagnosing Carney as suffering from a “psychopathic personality disorder”, which it warned must still pose some risk to children. Complaints against Carney were diverted away from gardai to the late Bishop James Kavanagh, who, it is claimed, had a “soft spot” for him.

In 1992, Cardinal Desmond Connell, then Archbishop of Dublin, removed Carney from the priesthood after a canonical secret trial, and later paid him £30,000 to leave his Dublin parish house.

Carney, was married in 2004 after moving to Britain, where he first lived in Cheltenham, England.

For the past 10 years he has lived in St Andrews, where he runs a family-friendly guest house, and enjoys the local golf club facilities.

Despite the findings of the Murphy report, the Irish Independent has established he is not currently being sought by gardai and there is no warrant for his arrest.

A number of alleged victims were interviewed by gardai and files were sent to the DPP but no prosecutions were brought.

In the case of Mr Dwyer’s complaint, the DPP did not proceed with a case due to insufficient evidence.

His mother Bridie later attempted to get access to the garda file on the case, but was refused on the grounds of confidentiality.

In Britain, the Home Office said Carney was not on the Sex Offenders Register because his admission of guilt in Ireland pre-dated the enacting of the UK register.

- John Cooney Shane Phelan and Tom Brady

Irish Independent

THE HSE is providing funding to a Cork-based charity for survivors of institutional abuse despite stating it would not do so until “outstanding impediments” to a new contract for 2010 had been finalised.

Right of Place, one of the largest groups for victims of abuse, was ordered as a matter of urgency as far back as October to supply the HSE with in-depth details of the running of the charity, its finances and how many bank accounts and credit cards it had, among other things.

Right of Place is run by Noel Barry, a victim of abuse at the Rosminian school at Upton, Co Cork. In 2009, the HSE allocated the group €337,500 and the Department of Education gave it €75,331. Since 2002 it has collected more than €2.2m from the HSE, and the health board previously, and more than €1m from the Department of Education. A further €88,000 was secured in National Lottery funding.

In December, this paper revealed there were serious questions to be answered as to how money donated by religious orders and the Government had been spent.

Meanwhile, founder Mr Barry sought an injunction locking out a new committee formed by disgruntled members seeking to take control of the organisation.

In a strongly worded letter to a new committee dated December 10, the HSE said it was “concerned and dismayed” at the situation and that clarity was urgently required.

“Time and space afforded by the HSE to various elements within the organisation to resolve their differences must cease. No new service agreement can be considered until matters are resolved, and given the vulnerability of the client group the sooner the better,” the letter stated.

However, the Irish Examiner has learned that the HSE is currently providing a grant of €20,000 a month which, according to the HSE, is to cover the “pay and non-pay costs of the organisation”.

Sources within Right of Place membership have indicated that it seems as though the HSE is not interested in investigating how money was spent in the past, or having pertinent questions which members are asking answered.

It is understood negotiations which had been ongoing with a HSE mediator between Mr Barry and a new committee have ceased.

In a draft agreement seen by the Irish Examiner, the HSE is proposing to continue with the existing company and, according to the document, “legal disputes will be deemed settled on the signing of the agreement”.

IRELAND’S CATHOLIC bishops begin their three-day spring meeting in Maynooth today. They have lots to talk about. All those holes, and still digging.

They might consider this. “The question you have to ask yourselves is: did you know what the institution was doing and the full consequences of what it was doing? Because, if you did, you were complicit with the recklessness. Or if the answer is you didn’t know, then you cannot have been discharging your responsibility . . . properly.”

Those questions were posed by Niall Fitzgerald, former chairman and chief executive of the multinational Unilever, and former chairman of the global media agency Reuters, as recalled in an Irish Times interview on Saturday. He posed them to friends of his in the Irish business world last summer. It provoked “a very ferocious conversation” and “real anger”.

Such questions apply as much to Ireland’s Catholic bishops, not least the “saw no evil, heard no evil” Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan.

Mr Fitzgerald also made this observation about Irish business figures. “I have been genuinely amazed . . . that they just haven’t got it. They don’t realise the degree of rage and anger that’s around, and that they have to make significant personal sacrifices to rebuild society’s trust in them and their institutions.” So too with our Catholic bishops.

The very latest example of this “still don’t get it” syndrome among the bishops was that speech by Bishop of Ferns Dennis Brennan last Monday night. When it came to “the funding of claims associated with child abuse as perpetrated by some members of the clergy”, it would “be necessary to invite the parishes to become part of the process financially”, he said.

Such “funding sought is not about sharing the blame, it is about asking for help to fulfil a God-given responsibility. That I did not cause the problem is not the response of the Christian . . .” he said.

Later, he ruled out asking the Vatican for financial help to compensate abuse victims. “I do not want to burden others,” he said. “This is our responsibility, and we would like to discharge our responsibilities ourselves,” he said.

Better then to burden the people of Ferns.

Colm O’Gorman, who knows a thing or two about what went on in Ferns diocese, pointed out that the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet. He suggested that victims of clerical sex abuse should take cases against the church, so holding the institution itself responsible rather than the people in the pews.

He also reminded us of another very recent “still don’t get it” episode.

“Anyone that was offended by the sheer vulgarity and grandiosity of the pictures that we saw coming out of the so-called summit by Irish bishops in Rome . . . will see the amount of money that swills around in the Vatican and the global church coffers. Let [us] see them divest themselves of some of that sort of wealth,” he said.

So Bishop Brennan prefers to lay the “burden” on people in Ferns. But if this is accepted in Ferns – the mother of all Irish Catholic dioceses when it comes to the clerical child sex abuse issue – you can be sure it will be followed by other Irish Catholic dioceses.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 23, we see Jesus at his most ferocious.

Speaking about scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, he said: “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, like wanting to take the place of honour at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi . . . Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces, neither going in yourselves nor allowing others to go in who want to.”

Rough, tough, but . . . that was Jesus!

It was the gospel reading at Mass on Sunday, October 30th, 2005, the first Sunday following publication of the Ferns report. That day, a Mass at Rowe Street church in Wexford town was celebrated by Bishop Eamonn Walsh, then administrator of the diocese. In his homily, he spoke of how the gospel reading was “so relevant for today”. Indeed.

Yet still, some Irish bishops continued in the old ways. Yesterday on the BBC Northern Ireland Sunday Sequence programme, Ian Elliott, chief executive of the Catholic Church’s own watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children, spoke of “hostility” he had experienced from bishops, and others “who create difficulties” as he attempted to implement uniform child protection guidelines in the church.

He spoke of “incomplete” guidelines and a “deficit in terms of policy” where child protection guidelines are concerned in the church.

Perhaps those tardy church figures share the view of Mgr Alex Stenson, chancellor to three archbishops of Dublin (Ryan, McNamara, Connell) from 1981-1997, and who also features in the Murphy report.

In an interview last January with the Irish Catholic newspaper, he said: “What abusers did was wrong. It was dreadful, but was it always sinful? It was always wrong. Sinful? I am not so sure at times.

“If someone is a paedophile, it can have a bearing on their culpability. In church law, culpability may be reduced depending on the severity of the pathology.”

Pope Benedict would seem to differ. Following his meeting with the Irish bishops last month, the pope said: “The sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image.”

Should someone tell Mgr Stenson? Does it matter?

In that same interview, Mgr Stenson also parted company with the Murphy Commission and current Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin on the commission’s finding that there was a culture of secrecy in the archdiocese. There was no such thing, Mgr Stenson said. What there was, “was a Christian culture of confidentiality and respect for people’s reputations”.

The bishops and their sycophantic acolytes, lay and clerical, had better “get it” – or the Catholic Church in Ireland has a destiny which is as predictable as gravity.

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE CATHOLIC Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has said he saw no reason why the pope would not meet Irish victims of clerical child sex abuse.

He also said funding for the compensation of victims should come from the sale of assets rather than by asking people to put their hands in their pockets.

However, he did not believe the Vatican should be approached about assisting with such funding. “I do believe this is an Irish question which has to be solved, I believe, within Ireland.”

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme yesterday, he said “I think it would be great” to see the pope meeting Irish victims of clerical child sex abuse but he did not know whether it would happen. It was not discussed at last month’s meeting in Rome between the pope and Ireland’s Catholic bishops.

On raising funds for compensation, he said it was better to “sell assets, sell houses, that sort of thing” rather than asking people for money. “Transparency, that’s the most important thing. That people would be consulted and know where the money was coming from.”

He said it was for each bishop in consultation with the people. “I would be very strong in emphasizing that,” he said.

There was nothing in canon law “to say that the Vatican should bail out” a diocese. There was “a question mark, of course, about church, be it Vatican or local church, holding a whole lot of valuable assets. I’m not particularly comfortable about that, but I do believe this is an Irish question which has to be solved, I believe, within Ireland.

“I think really, whether the Vatican should be selling assets or not, it is really a separate question from this. It didn’t arise at all in the meeting in Rome.”

He felt “the Rome visit certainly didn’t meet expectations of people, and I think it was unfortunate that the formalities of dress and whether people kissed the pope’s ring or didn’t kiss it . . . distracted from the real purpose of the meeting and, indeed, the substance of the meeting”.

He felt “people were angry and rightly angry at the apparent pomp and ceremony, at the kissing of the pope’s ring (which he did not do)”. He was “somewhat uncomfortable in relation to both the dress and the kissing of rings, that sort of thing. I feel it belonged to another era.”

He hoped the pope’s pastoral letter “would be more satisfactory, perhaps, from the survivors’ point of view”.

Saturday March 06 2010

Jaw-dropping comments by Denis Brennan, Catholic Bishop of Ferns, added greatly to (some of) the nation’s anxiety this week. He suggested that his local parishioners should open their purses to help his church out with its alleged current financial embarrassment.

The sting in the tail was his definition of what makes and unmakes a good Christian. It was a case of the béal bocht occupying the high moral ground. Most bishops had the sense to cut back on moral pronouncements since the Ryan and Murphy reports, realising their damaged authority means this isn’t the moment to tell people what’s right and wrong.

But money has its own imperatives, especially when it comes to the institutional Catholic Church.

“That ‘I did not cause the problem’ is not the response of the Christian,” Bishop Brennan said. “That I would like to help in the work of justice, healing, reconciliation, a safer environment for children, proper financial stewardship and overall good economic health is the response of the Christian.”

This slogan manipulates a Christian attitude to a kind of Miss World aspiration, where contestants line up, look humble and swear their top priority is world peace. Of course it is, but will saying so make it happen?

The parallel universe called ‘the real world’ may have wondered what planet Bishop Brennan occupies. Live register figures are hovering over the 400,000 mark but the core issue was the reason why the bishop wanted lay people to cough up cash. The money was required to help pay mortgages taken out on the bishop’s palace — that having been done, reportedly, to pay some claims due to survivors of clerical child abuse in the diocese.

The question of why Catholics in Ferns should effectively pay a double levy for abuses to their own community didn’t arise. Direct and indirect government taxes have already bailed out religious orders to the likely final amount of more than €1bn after Bertie Ahern and Michael Woods’ decision. Ferns people contributed to this.

The Ferns diocese also received some €5.8m from a national Catholic diocesan fund because it is the smallest diocese with one of the highest proven rates of child abuse. The rate may reflect the people of Ferns’ own courage in insisting abuse cases be disclosed.

Bishop Brennan called the Ferns abuses a tragedy — but these were crimes; legally and ethically. They persisted because successive bishops didn’t act and because priests were effectively enabled by keeping their sacramental powers, which let them keep abusing with an odds-on chance of not being reported. If the Church had acted sooner, there’d be less to pay.

Bishop Brennan was one of the first bishops to speak out after they met Pope Benedict XVI. You have to wonder whether his call reflects the Pope’s policy for Ireland. Behind the bishop’s statement looms the spectre of the Vatican’s wealth. Nowhere and at no time has it paid a cent of compensation to survivors in the many countries where clerical abuses happened. Would the Vatican let Ferns go bankrupt to safeguard its own assets? Or other Irish dioceses?

The way it’s organised helps the Vatican retain its assets no matter what happens elsewhere — Canada, the US, Germany or any of the other First World countries whose citizens have the confidence to challenge criminal behaviour. This medieval-style governance is often used to evade collective responsibility if a single diocese or national hierarchy is in difficulty. Look at it differently and you might argue that the governance system is one of the biggest obstacles to improving child protection within the Catholic Church.

There are proven difficulties in communicating abuses between Rome and local dioceses; proven difficulties in enabling survivors to speak directly to Rome; proven difficulties in state authorities pursuing clerical abusers across local and international diocesan boundaries, never mind making Rome’s diplomatic channels accountable to national laws.

The bishop’s statement is centuries away from the pay-for-indulgences practices that made the Catholic Church so very rich. But the emotional tone of his remarks plays some of the same tunes. Then, the more indulgences you bought for yourself or your departed loved ones, the closer you got to heaven. That was everyone’s preferred destination.

The same song encouraged new middle classes in 19th century Ireland to donate money and land to build churches. Odds are if you unpicked the financial history of any church or presbytery in Ireland, you would find the purses of thousands of lay people for whom giving money to the Church was a way of being good.

Bishop Brennan sounds like he’s playing the goodness cards without taking responsibility for the cover-ups that let abuse continue for so long. For example, he feels competent enough to define what a Christian is, even though the Ferns example, and indeed the Church’s attitude to paying compensation, is hard to place in any New Testament story about Jesus Christ.

He uses his assumed moral authority to tell lay people what’s best for them, which happily coincides with what’s best for his financial affairs. Then he blames the situation on ‘mismanagement, poor understanding and a lack of resolve’, as though bad book-keeping is a bigger mote in the eye than clerical child abuse.

Thought: maybe the rest of the country is on another planet. After all, this State is practically bankrupt while the Vatican books are showing deliciously healthy profits.

Irish Independent

Sunday March 07 2010

An email letter came to the Sunday Independent last week. It was headed ‘Completing the work of justice and healing in Ferns Diocese, and was signed by Rev John Carroll, Diocesan Communications Officer. The tone was injured, the gist that every organ of media in the country had got it wrong: that when Denis Brennan, the Bishop of Ferns, was reported as saying last Monday that the diocese may be forced to sell properties if it cannot raise enough “donations from parishioners” to fund compensation arising from abuse claims, he didn’t mean that, at all, at all.

In fact, when Brennan said that a request for financial help from parishioners was not about sharing blame, but about “asking for help to fulfil a God-given responsibility”, he didn’t mean that he was going to ask for it. It was only, according to John Carroll’s letter, that the diocesan authority was “continuing to consult with members of the diocesan family” . . . a process that “happens each year at the annual Finance AGM”.
In fact, a decision “will only occur after the conclusion of consultation over the coming months, and perhaps years, with churchgoers”.

Could one reasonably infer from that that the business of handing over some monies as a small recompense for what was done to innocent children may take years? If there was confusion, Fr Carroll’s letter has only served to add to it.

At least Bishop Willie Walsh has the decency to be straightforward in his suggestion, as disappointing from him as it is horrifying, that in his diocese too there may be an attempt to hit the faithful for a bailout for the crimes of his priests.

They’ve done it again: they have confirmed that they really believe that they can close the door on this monstrous crime and sin. There is no comprehension that there can never be closure on such monstrous evil and injustice.

So let’s look at some other views of what Denis Brennan said/meant. David Quinn runs the Iona Institute, a sort of Catholic think tank, and not what passes for a liberal one, even in Catholic terms. (Its website currently headlines an article which begins ‘The Civil Partnership Bill will mean that belief in traditional sexual morality and traditional marriage will be treated as a form of prejudice to be punishable by law under certain circumstances’. Really?) He was interviewed by Pat Kenny on radio the day following the Brennan remarks. Quinn said it was either raise money from the parishioners or go bankrupt, as far as Ferns was concerned. He also said that he has always believed that if a bishop is found guilty of a crime, that bishop should go to jail. He was agreeing with Pat Kenny on the analogy between Church culpability and banker culpability. But: since the reporting of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities was not mandatory for the period dealt with by the Ferns report, the failure to report “wasn’t strictly speaking a crime,” he opined.

The late Cardinal Cahal Daly said, when the shame of his priests was revealed, that they protected them because they (the hierarchy) didn’t know just how deep-seated the urge to molest children was.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that it was difficult to understand why good people could continue to go to church without feeling sick on entering the doors. There was a barrage of outraged letters to the editor, defiantly defending church-going, while declaring horror at “the minority” of child abuse. It was very clear that I had touched a nerve in a lot of people.

Colm O’Gorman, the man whose courage and determination set in motion the matters which have ended in the Ferns report and other reports, pointed out to Sean O’Rourke on radio on Tuesday, that 80 per cent of the projected costs of the whole Ferns affair have nothing to do with monetary compensation for the victims, but have been incurred by legal costs for the diocese in defending itself. In other words, defending the indefensible.

In the same slot as his interview with David Quinn, Pat Kenny asked Mary Raftery, the journalist whose television documentary cast so much light on the overall issues, what would happen to other Church services if a diocese was made bankrupt. He named “Accord”, the marriage advice service. (Some might believe that the kind of advice offered by the Catholic Church on marriage might not be worth having.) But Raftery suggested that parishioners making contributions could specify that it went to such services and not be designated in any way to pay the child abuse debts.

She clearly trusts the Church to obey such an injunction. It’s no accident that the Church is, as Colm O’Gorman pointed out last week, one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet. (I have certainly been told by wealthy Irish business figures in one diocese that they are called in each year and told by a man in purple what their separate expected contributions will be for the year. It always runs into a minimum of six figures. The shame is that most of them meekly write the cheques.) There is apparently a mortgage on the bishop’s house in Ferns since the scandal emerged. It yielded €1.8m, and costs €120,000 per annum to service. Just think what a mortgage on the contents of just one of the Vatican museums would yield.

Sunday Independent

Saturday March 06 2010 – Irish Independent.

Tracey Fay’s death has shifted public focus in the continuing and unbroken narrative of child abuse and neglect in Ireland. For the past decade, and before that, we have been able to blame the church. Now the blame has shifted, quite markedly, to the State. Her death, and that of many like her, is the result of the State’s failure to set up and fund a proper care system.

It is an irony that the period during which this new abuse occurred has been a period of intense self-examination over how abuse happened from 1920 to the 1980s, carried out principally by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, and focused on the industrial schools. But with the change of focus we can no longer hide behind blaming the church.

We never could, of course.

It was always the State that was responsible for the care of its children and let them down. But the State was effectively controlled by the church, and successive governments without exception obeyed unquestioningly the clerical direction that covered up chronic, persistent and damaging child abuse. It is a seamless story, as long as the Bible and as terrible in the accounts that come out of it — of human dishonesty, evasion, and the avoidance of truth and basic goodness in helping children.

Tracey Fay died eight years ago. The facts, and the State’s abject failure, would have remained under a confidentiality cover but for the courage and good judgement of Alan Shatter, whose calm and measured performance in the Dail this week was exemplary.

Not for the first time has he shamed the State. He has confronted the absurdities of the HSE,(Health Services Executive) who were trying to stop him on a trumped-up claim about a constitutional right to privacy. And he obliterated the incompetence of Children’s Minister Barry Andrews, whom he rightly describes as lacking both authority and the ability to implement what he says should be done. I do not believe Andrews when he says there was no intent to conceal. I do not believe he knows whether this was an intent or not. His performance indicates, clearly enough for me, that he has been led and directed by others.

The HSE is massively culpable. The services for which it is responsible are in chaos and the catalogue of other deaths, in addition to that of Tracey Fay, were concealed because of the disgraceful circumstance that led to them. Other arguments, about respect for the families’ privacy, are little short of nonsense.

The HSE does not know where it is. This was made unquestionably clear following Judge Yvonne Murphy’s findings in her Dublin diocesan child abuse commission report.

Specifically, this was where the HSE failed to deliver the information the commission sought on child abuse. Astonishingly, the HSE revealed that files covering 114,000 cases were based on the child’s name, had no cross-referencing, had to be searched manually, and were spread over 50 different locations. Equally astonishingly, and rather lamely as well, the commission shrugged its shoulders and gave up on this line of inquiry. Instead, it should have reported the dereliction of the HSE to the Government, and sought further direction as to how to proceed.

Though not directly relevant to diocesan abuse, Tracey Fay’s fate is part of the inchoate system being followed by this vital state service. Do we not have computers? Do we use them selectively, not including abused and unwanted children because they do not matter?

I have often wondered, is it deliberate? The State has tolerated child abuse for the 90 years of its existence. We can’t pretend anymore that it wasn’t known about. Wild and perverse acts of cruelty, sexual perversion and abuse, deprivation of every kind — education, training, clothing, food, healthcare — took place and were then concealed by the Department of Education, by ministers and senior officials, as a statutory act, though without the benefit of statute.

Then there were the personal records. Concealment of them, and obstruction over access, represented a deliberate act of confusion that caused victims of abuse years of frustration and difficulty. Lost documents within the department at times made it look as though a permanently employed arsonist went from place to place to burn or flood storage facilities, and destroy evidence of collusion between the church and State.

In the end, and with total and urbane dishonesty, the State put the blame on the church and pleaded that it did not know what happened during a horrific 90-year period of abuse eventually laid bare by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

The Murphy report did the same, on a limited scale and in

one area of the country only. This lie, about not knowing, was repeatedly contradicted by reports in the Dail and by periodic legal cases. But governments — all of them — looked the other way.

It has continued to happen. It never stopped and it goes on happening, with nothing proper put in place to stop it. We do not have the records of how bad it is, how widely-spread or pernicious. We do not know what has been done on the ground to stop it, and even whether we know how to deal with all these problems.

The church is less part of the secular equation than it was. It is no longer trusted to play any social role, despite the fact that, clearly, we cannot effectively play such a role without continuing to wreck lives. We cannot even monitor the enormities that go on.

The Tracey Fays of this world are an endemic class of victim, always to be part of us. No serious rescue attempt has been mounted and financed by the State, to its undying shame. It is a shame that stretches back through the State’s history, staining what we lovingly call our “identity”. Ours is the identity of an abuse-ridden society.

Friday March 05 2010

One of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers and a member of an elite choir in St Peter’s Basilica has been implicated in a gay prostitution ring, in the latest sexual scandal to taint the Vatican.

Ghinedu Ehiem, a Nigerian, was dismissed by the Vatican on Wednesday from the Giulia Choir after his name appeared in transcripts of police wiretaps, published by an Italian newspaper, in an unrelated Italian investigation.

The wiretaps were carried out in connection with a probe into corruption in contracts to build public works, including the planned venue in Sardinia of last year’s G8 summit. The summit was eventually moved to the Abruzzo region as part of efforts to help it recover from an earthquake.

Among four people arrested last month in the corruption probe was Angelo Balducci, a engineer who is a board member of Italy’s public works department and a construction consultant to the Vatican. Mr Balducci was arrested on corruption charges and the allegations of prostitution emerged only later.

Elite

Mr Balducci is also a member of an elite group called “Gentlemen of His Holiness”, ushers who are called to serve in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on major occasions such as when the Pope receives heads of state or presides at big events.

“Gentlemen of His Holiness” carried the coffin of the late Pope John Paul II at his funeral in 2005.

Excerpts of the wiretaps and police documents published in the Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica’ showed that Mr Ehiem (40) had been in regular contact with Mr Balducci before Mr Balducci’s arrest last month and the subject of their conversation was gay sex. A police document prepared for magistrates and published in part by ‘La Repubblica’ said Mr Balducci was in contact with Mr Ehiem and an Italian who were part of what the police called “an organised network … to abet male prostitution”. It was not immediately possible to contact Mr Ehiem’s lawyer.

A Vatican source said Mr Balducci, who is still in jail, had been dismissed from the elite group of ushers and that his name would not appear in the next edition of the Vatican’s directory.

“He obviously can’t come back here after being accused of these things,” the source said.

The latest black eye for the Vatican comes on the heels of major paedophilia scandals involving the abuse of children by priests in Ireland, Germany and the United States.

Mr Balducci’s lawyer, Franco Coppi, one of Italy’s highest profile attorneys, said he had no comment on the newest accusations against his client, saying: “We have much more serious things to be concerned with right now,” referring to the corruption charges.

Mr Ehiem had sung in the choir for 19 years. Wiretap transcripts published by ‘La Repubblica’ showed that among the men Mr Ehiem allegedly procured for Balducci were seminarians.

- Philip Pullella in Vatican City

Irish Independent

A GROUP set up to support Catholic religious orders urged parishioners to refuse to help with compensation payments to abuse victims.

On Monday, the Bishop of Ferns Denis Brennan asked that his 100,000 parishioners contribute to the diocese’s massive legal and compensation bills.

The Let Our Voices Emerge (LOVE) organisation yesterday said it would prefer the downfall of the Catholic Church.

The group’s call came as Bishop Brennan said he did not want to “burden” the Vatican with a request for financial help, while singer Sinead O’Connor predicted the Catholic Church would not survive the 21st century.

LOVE spokesperson Florence Horsman Hogan said yesterday that the church would not manage without selling some of its assets: “If people want the church to survive in its present state, they need to contribute to ensure survival. If people don’t want the church to survive in its present state — don’t.”

She said she had spoken to members of religious orders as well as abuse survivors who felt in the past that the Catholic church was being unfairly targeted by people with agendas.

“They now state that it would be preferable to see the downfall of the church as it stands, and the rebuilding of a more humble and truthful entity.”

LOVE was established by former industrial school pupils to support religious orders who were being slammed because of abuse allegations. However, the group spoke out against institutional child abuse and withdrew its support for the orders in the wake of the publication of the Ryan report last year and yesterday repeated its call for atonement.

“We have seen brave people — nuns, priests and brothers — give selflessly to care for us in the industrial schools. But we’ve also collectively seen a corruption that must be atoned for,” Ms Horsman Hogan said.

In a letter published in today’s Irish Independent, singer Sinead O’Connor speaks about her astonishment at Bishop Brennan’s request to his flock to pay bills arising from the horrific sex abuse in his diocese.

The outspoken singer says the Vatican has always put its business interests before the interests of children.

Ms O’Connor says that: “If Christ was here he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him.”

Bishop Brennan has ruled out a request to the Vatican for financial help for the abuse victims’ compensation fund. “I am not familiar with the finances of the Vatican,” he said.

“I do not want to burden others,” he added. “This is our responsibility and we would like to discharge our responsibilities ourselves.”

Speaking yesterday on local radio, Dr Brennan said it was up to the parishes to decide if they wanted to sell an asset or donate funds and denied he had made a specific request for additional donations. “We have not ruled anything in or out. We need to get people’s reactions. We are trying to be as transparent as possible,” he said.

- Conor Kane and Colette Browne

Irish Independent

The Bishop of Ferns Dr Denis Brennan told parishioners on Monday night it has had to pay more than €8 million to settle 48 civil actions, while a further 13 actions were pending.

Other dioceses such as Dublin, which has paid out €11 million in abuse settlements, are also facing severe financial challenges. This diocese has settled 99 actions, and a further 34 are pending.

Dr Brennan said a request for financial help from parishioners was not about sharing blame, but about “asking for help to fulfil a God-given responsibility”.

He said people who suffered abuse were not the cause of the diocese’s problems. Instead, the actions of “individual perpetrators, along with mismanagement, poor understanding and/or lack of resolve” were to blame.

“The Diocese of Ferns has been on a road involving the settlement of claims for 15 years now. It has been very much a team effort – various administrations and personnel, local diocesan and national church funding,” Dr Brennan said.

“Up to 80 per cent of the road of justice has been travelled. As we look to complete this road, it will be necessary to invite the parishes to become part of the process financially.”

The diocese estimates it will need to raise €60,000 a year from its 100,000 parishioners over a period of 20 years. An alternative plan is to sell assets and properties, including the Bishop’s Palace in Wexford, St Peter’s College Seminary, or agricultural land on the Rosslare road. It insists that none of the money from weekly collections will go towards settlement costs.

Diocese spokesman Fr John Carroll said yesterday that the bishop’s request was about sparking a debate on the issue. “This is more of an internal discussion within the church,” he said. “We’ve had people come forward with offers of help, but maybe there is a better way, like selling off property. We want to open up that discussion.” He confirmed that of the €8 million paid in compensation, about €5 million came from the Stewardship Fund, set up by Irish bishops.

The diocese has paid the balance through its savings, remortgaging the bishop’s residence, and raising a €1.8 million loan. It has paid out a further €2.1 million on legal fees for abuse inquiries, and €836,000 towards the treatment of paedophile priests.

In addition to Ferns, other Catholic dioceses may be forced to take similar actions to fund major compensation bills arising from abuse claims. While many dioceses have insurance policies to indemnify against abuse claims, these typically relate to future claims and do not cover cases which were known about in the past. In addition, most of the Stewardship Funds, which have helped fund abuse settlements across the Catholic Church in Ireland, are no longer available for abuse cases.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said the finances of the Dublin Archdiocese are under severe pressure as a result of compensation and the economic downturn. Church collections are responsible for 70 per cent of the annual income in Dublin. However, money from the sale of assets and investment income has fallen sharply.