The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has spoken out strongly against the Irish Catholic institutions that perpetrated and concealed the abuse of children for decades; but the Vatican itself remains silent.

DUBLIN – Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin slammed Irish Catholic orders Monday for concealing their culpability in decades of child abuse, and said they needed to come up with much more money to compensate victims.

The comments from Martin, a veteran Vatican diplomat, were the harshest yet by a Roman Catholic leader following last week’s report detailing widespread abuse in scores of church-run industrial schools from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Martin said the orders of nuns and Catholic brothers who ran the workhouse-style schools must drop their refusal to renegotiate an intensely criticized 2002 agreement with the Irish government over compensation for victims. …

Martin said many church leaders remained “in denial” following a nine-year investigation by a commission, which published a devastating 2,600-page report five days ago.

He said the report documented beyond any doubt “church institutions where children were placed in the care of people with practically no morals.” The last of those schools for Ireland’s poorest children closed more than a decade ago.

Ireland’s national police force, the Garda Siochana, announced Monday that a senior detective, Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne, would study the report to see if it provided any new evidence for prosecuting clerics for assault, rape or other criminal offenses. The report, however, did not identify any abusers by name because of a right-to-privacy lawsuit by the Christian Brothers order.

Martin accused the orders of falling short on the euro128 million amount they promised to the government. He said their failure to complete transfers of cash and property worth that much over the past seven years “is stunning.”