Pope meets with Irish churchmen after abuse report

(June 6, 2009) Pope Benedict XVI expressed solidarity with victims abused by clergy in Ireland in a meeting with the country's top churchmen Friday, following a report detailing decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at church-run reform schools, the Vatican said. Pope Benedict held a long meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who briefed the pope on the report, said Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Father Lombardi, who is also the Director of Vatican Radio, gave no details of the talks but said Pope Benedict expressed his closeness to the victims and assured his prayers for the church in Ireland. The Irish government-funded independent report last month detailed «endemic» molestation and rape at church-run boys' facilities and ritualized beatings at girls' schools from the 1930s to the 1990s. The 2,600-page report which took nine years to compile and was resisted by Roman Catholic religious orders that ran the facilities, concluded that church officials shielded pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy. It was the latest damning report about the generations of abuse young people suffered at the hands of religious men and women in church or at church-run schools and facilities around the world. On Thursday, the 18 religious orders implicated in the Irish report bowed to government pressure and pledged to allow external audits of their finances and to establish an entirely new compensation fund for the 14,000 victims. They say church groups should foot half of the compensation bill, which now exceeds ¤1.1 billion ($1.5 billion).

Pope Benedict XVI expressed solidarity with victims abused by clergy in Ireland in a meeting with the country's top churchmen Friday, following a report detailing decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at church-run reform schools, the Vatican said. Pope Benedict held a long meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who briefed the pope on the report, said Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Father Lombardi, who is also the Director of Vatican Radio, gave no details of the talks but said Pope Benedict expressed his closeness to the victims and assured his prayers for the church in Ireland. The Irish government-funded independent report last month detailed «endemic» molestation and rape at church-run boys' facilities and ritualized beatings at girls' schools from the 1930s to the 1990s. The 2,600-page report which took nine years to compile and was resisted by Roman Catholic religious orders that ran the facilities, concluded that church officials shielded pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy. It was the latest damning report about the generations of abuse young people suffered at the hands of religious men and women in church or at church-run schools and facilities around the world. On Thursday, the 18 religious orders implicated in the Irish report bowed to government pressure and pledged to allow external audits of their finances and to establish an entirely new compensation fund for the 14,000 victims. They say church groups should foot half of the compensation bill, which now exceeds ¤1.1 billion ($1.5 billion).

Pope Benedict XVI expressed solidarity with victims abused by clergy in Ireland in a meeting with the country's top churchmen Friday, following a report detailing decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at church-run reform schools, the Vatican said. Pope Benedict held a long meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who briefed the pope on the report, said Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Father Lombardi, who is also the Director of Vatican Radio, gave no details of the talks but said Pope Benedict expressed his closeness to the victims and assured his prayers for the church in Ireland. The Irish government-funded independent report last month detailed «endemic» molestation and rape at church-run boys' facilities and ritualized beatings at girls' schools from the 1930s to the 1990s. The 2,600-page report which took nine years to compile and was resisted by Roman Catholic religious orders that ran the facilities, concluded that church officials shielded pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy. It was the latest damning report about the generations of abuse young people suffered at the hands of religious men and women in church or at church-run schools and facilities around the world. On Thursday, the 18 religious orders implicated in the Irish report bowed to government pressure and pledged to allow external audits of their finances and to establish an entirely new compensation fund for the 14,000 victims. They say church groups should foot half of the compensation bill, which now exceeds ¤1.1 billion ($1.5 billion).