Catholic Primate Sean Brady Guilty of Cardinal Errors
Unbelievably, even at this critical time, clerical sex abuse is back again to haunt us. And this time it reaches right to the very top, to the man in charge of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady.
The latest revelations came in a BBC TV program just over a week ago about the notorious Father Brendan Smyth, the worst sexual predator in the church here, and what happened when the then Father Sean Brady investigated Smyth’s abuse back in 1975.
You will, I’m sure, need no reminding of the appalling child abuse that Smyth perpetrated here north and south of the border and also in the U.S. when he was sent over there.
He was rampant — there is no other word for it — over four decades from the 1950s to the 1990s as he was shifted around from parish to parish and even from country to country. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of children were abused by him.
Eventually he was jailed in the north, and subsequently in the south. His case was so controversial that it led to the fall of the Fianna Fail/Labor government here in the 1990s over the attorney general’s handling of Smyth’s extradition.
Having brought down a taoiseach (prime minister) back then, it seems certain that Smyth, who died in prison here in 1997, will now be responsible for bringing down a cardinal as well.