102 Catholic priests eyed for child abuse

Discussion in 'Religion and Spirituality' started by jzlucas, Mar 8, 2006.

  1. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, rocked for a decade by sex scandals, on Wednesday made its biggest admission yet: 102 of its Dublin priests past and present, or 3.6 percent of the total, are suspected of abusing children.

    The disclosure comes a week before the government convenes a probe into how church and state authorities conspired, by negligence and design, to cover up decades of child abuse within the Dublin priesthood.

    "It's very frightening for me to see that in some of these cases, so many children were abused. It's very hard to weigh that up against anything," said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, a Vatican diplomat assigned to Dublin in 2003 to address the problem in Ireland's largest Catholic congregation.