Vatican Shielded Dublin Priest Until He Raped Boy in Pub, Inquiry Says
This is both heartbreaking and infuriating:
The Vatican tried to stop church leaders here from defrocking a particularly dangerous pedophile priest and relented only after he raped a boy in a restroom at a pub, according to an investigation released Friday.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said he fully accepted the findings of the latest chapter in Ireland’s investigation into child abuse by priests in Dublin who were shielded from the law by Catholic leaders.
Archbishop Martin called the priest, Tony Walsh, an “extremely devious man” who should never have been ordained.
A state-ordered investigation into cover-ups by the Dublin Archdiocese reported last year that church officials had shielded scores of priests from criminal investigation over several decades and did not report any crimes to the police until the mid-1990s.
A chapter dealing with Mr. Walsh was censored from the original report because he was still facing a criminal trial at the time. It was published Friday, after Mr. Walsh’s conviction on Dec. 6 for raping three boys over a five-year period three decades ago. He got a 12-year prison term.
The investigators concluded that Mr. Walsh raped and molested hundreds of boys and girls while serving as a priest in Dublin from 1978 to 1996. They described him as “probably the most notorious child sexual abuser” of the 46 cases they investigated.
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The New York Times has more on this tragedy here.