The piece below is from The Irish Times today.
The catalyst for the report is the making public the behaviour of Fr Jospeh Marmion. It makes for shocking reading but the Jesuits have to be complimented for being transparent, at least so it seems at present.
As long as secrecy is the name of the game there will be no change and unfortunately the Catholic Church is still hiding behind the misguided art of secrecy.
This Jesuit report might help other congregations and dioceses to abandon their worship of secrecy. Unfortunately, they think they are being clever. Not so. Secrecy is the oxygen that allowed for so much wrong doing. Dishonesty flourishes in secrecy.
FROM THE IRISH TIMES
Child sexual abuse complaints against 44 Jesuit priests were received by the congregation between 1945 and late last year, a newly published report has disclosed.
Of the 44 priests, 22 had one complaint made against them and 22 had more than one complaint made against them. All relevant information regarding these complaints has been reported to the gardaí and Tusla.
All the incidents were said to have occurred between 1940 and 2004, with 93 per cent of the complaints received between 1991 and 2023, and related to abuse perpetrated in school and non-school settings.
The findings are contained in a report published by the Society of Jesus and mainly related to three Jesuit schools, Belvedere College in Dublin, Crescent College in Limerick and Clongowes Wood College in Kildare.
Some 93 complaints of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse received were against Fr Joseph Marmion, who died in 2000, during his period at the three schools between 1951 and 1978. Of these, 70 per cent while he was at Belvedere College.
Excluding Fr Marmion, there were 34 complaints of sexual abuse received against 19 other Jesuits at the three schools. Complaints against them were received by the Jesuits Society between 1965 and 2023 and were reported to have occurred between 1940 and 1991.
No comments:
Post a Comment