Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #6

to care for children,

even after a secret stint

in a clinic run by the

Servants of the Paraclete.

The clinic allowed Father Walsh

to roam the streets

of the nearby large city,

after admitting

to abusing 100 kids,

unsupervised.

He was allowed to dress

in clerical attire and said Masses

in the local churches.

Father Walsh visited a house and paid

a lot of attention to the 11-year-old son.

He agreed to babysit for

the children and God

knows what happened to

the kids that week.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a clinic allowing him

to do something like that.

That is ridiculous. And they're

not being held accountable.

It's..

Father Walsh was immediately

removed from the clinic.

I think it's about time when a paedophile

gets thrown out of a clinic.

Through the mercy of God,

rest in peace. Amen.

And we ask these

and all our prayers,

through Jesus Christ,

Our Lord, Amen.

Even after a decade of abuse,

the faithful heard nothing about

Walsh from the Archbishop of Dublin.

Why didn't you go yourself, Bishop?

- Go where?

- Go to the victims yourself.

Erm.. And encourage them

to go to the police.

I suppose perhaps I should've,

perhaps I should have done

but, erm, I've so much to do.

In secret, Archbishop Connell

did launch an investigation,

but according to the laws of Roman

Catholicism, known as Canon law,

Connell followed orders from the Vatican

to keep any details of Walsh's crimes

hidden behind the walls

of the church.

Everybody involved in that process,

the accuser, the accused

and the witnesses,

are all obliged to take

an oath of absolute secrecy,

that they will never reveal

for the rest of their life

any of the information that they

learned in the process.

Victims were sworn

to absolute secrecy.

And the sanction for breaking that secrecy

was automatic excommunication, the

ultimate sanction the Church can enforce.

When you read the Murphy Report

you begin to see the same patterns

emerging all over the place.

Patterns in Boston

and in Milwaukee

that were similar to Dublin.

Priests were moved

from "A" to "B" to "C" to "D"..

Nobody told anybody, the civil

authorities were not informed.

The Murphy Commission got access

to documents, they got cooperation

from Archbishop Devlin Martin,

and were able to reveal,

how the Vatican was part

of what went on in Dublin

In fact, how the Vatican

oversaw it.

Following the dictates

of the Vatican,

13 years after the first

sign of Walsh's abuse,

Archbishop Connell finally

convened a secret church trial.

They appoint three judges, Canon

lawyers, to listen to evidence,

which is overwhelmingly

evidence against this guy,

and they recommend in 1992 that he

should be dismissed from the priesthood.

And he's always pleaded not guilty.

Even though he's admitted

to 100 cases of abuse,

he's pleaded not guilty.

He appeals that to Rome.

For eight months,

the Vatican dithers

and decides

what to do with him,

and in that eight months

he abuses another child.

Abuses a child at his

grandfather's funeral.

The Vatican is

fundamentally responsible

for this guy being abused.

The Vatican come

back and decide,

"Well, we won't dismiss him

from the priesthood,"

"Put him in a monastery

for 10 years."

The bishop is tearing his hair out.

"What do you mean, put him

in a monastery for 10 years?"

"No monastery will take him!"

And so, Des Connell pleads with

the Vatican,

and he personally went

to see Cardinal Ratzinger

to write his dismissal order.

The Vatican did nothing.

But angry parents forced

the police to act.

Walsh was convicted of

sexual assault in 1995.

Only then, after tolerating Walsh's

abuse of hundreds of children,

did the Vatican finally

dismiss Father Walsh

from the priestly state.

Two priests who were judges

on the Tony Walsh case

swore an oath of secrecy.

Where are they now?

They're two bishops.

For priests, secrecy

can have its rewards.

But for the faithful in Ireland, the

cover-up may be an unforgivable sin.

We were 95% practicing Catholics.

I spoke to a priest

only yesterday, he says,

"4% come to church in Dublin."

But that's not to say that

they've lost their faith.

They certainly lost faith

in the hierarchy.

In 2010, Pope Benedict sought to

bring the flock back to the church

by writing an unprecedented

letter to the Irish faithful.

To us bishops he says,

"We must admit that grave

errors of judgment were made,"

"and failures of leadership

occurred"

"which have seriously undermined

our credibility and effectiveness."

What he does is, he blames the Irish

bishops

for their misplaced concern

for the reputation of the church

in the avoidance of scandal,

for not following Canon law.

He never once acknowledged the role

of the Vatican in all of this.

I spoke to one bishop

who was so angry.

He said, "How dare he blame us?"

"Show me where we

didn't follow Canon law!"

"Canon law was the problem!"

That prompted a few people to come

out of the woodwork, if you like.

An anonymous source leaked

a mysterious document.

It was a smoking gun.

A 1997 letter from the Vatican

that overruled attempts

by Irish bishops

to report sex abuse to the police.

Why didn't any of them just stand up

publicly and come out and say,

"The Vatican has instructed us

not to report crimes to the police"?

Because they are totally

loyal to the Vatican.

In 2011, the release of yet another

government investigation

was the final blow

which shattered relations

between the Vatican and Ireland.

The Cloyne report excavates

the dysfunction,

the disconnection, the elitism

that dominates the culture

of the Vatican today.

The rape and

the torture of children

were downplayed or managed

to uphold instead

the primacy of the institution

its power, its standing

and its reputation.

This calculated,

withering position

being the polar opposite

of the radicalism,

the humility and the compassion upon

which the Roman Church was founded.

Even as Irish churches lay empty,

Rome received tens of thousands

of pilgrims from all over the world

who had come to see the beatification

of Pope John Paul II.

The penultimate step

in the path to sainthood

beatification is the celebration

of the blessed souls arrival in heaven

proven by a miracle performed

in the John Paul's name.

To the faithful, John Paul was one of

the world's most popular popes

famous for helping to end

the Communist rule in his native Poland

and throughout Europe.

He denounced

the excesses of Capitalism

and apologized for the

Church's past sins

in dealing

with other Religions.

As the prayers continued

late into the night,

victims of sex abuse

couldn't help wondering

why Benedict was

in such a rush

to move John Paul's soul

on the path to sainthood.

Marcial Maciel Degollado

was one of the world's most charismatic

fundraisers for the Catholic Church.

In 1941, he founded

the Legion Of Christ,

a group of young zealots

who raised phenomenal

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