Irish bishops one-by-one will give an accounting to Pope Benedict XVI of their views, actions or knowledge about decades of sexual abuse by clergy, a participant said, but resignations were not on the agenda for the Vatican’s extraordinary summit that began yesterday.
“A casualty of all this has been the truth,” Clogher Bishop Joseph Duffy said on Sunday on the eve of the two-day summit. “The fullness of the truth must come out, everything must be laid on the table.”
Duffy, a spokesman for the Irish Bishops Conference, said the church was “admittedly slower than in needs to be” in grappling with a “culture of concealment.”
Last year, an investigation revealed that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics turned a blind eye. A separate report in Ireland had been released months earlier documenting decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages.
The revelations shocked and disgusted the predominantly Catholic nation, and victims quickly demanded certain Irish bishops resign. Several have agreed, including two who stepped down on Christmas Day, but others have flatly refused.
Among the 24 bishops at the summit will be Martin Drennan of Galway, who has rebuffed calls that he stepped down.
Duffy said the summit was not intended to deal with the issue of resignations.
“Precise questions of resignation is not on the agenda of the bishops because that is not our prerogative,” Duffy told reporters.
He said the summit would deal with the “enormous injustice and cruelty” to the victims and the Irish faithful at large.
In the Dublin report, investigators determined that a succession of archbishops and senior aides had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. The files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop’s private vault.
The reports follow a campaign by the archbishop of Dublin and primate of Ireland, Diarmuid Martin, to confront abuse allegations and deal honestly with the cover-up and victims’ suffering. Martin, who heads the Holy See’s office on justice, had welcomed the bishops’ resignations last year.
But Drennan, insisting he did nothing to endanger children, has clung to his office. He and the others will each have seven minutes to have their say before the pope, who will listen to them in groups.
Among the Holy See officials joining the summit was US Cardinal William Levada, who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a key Vatican office that reviews abuse claims against clergy worldwide. The pope himself once held the office.
Duffy said the discussions would be frank.
“It is my information that the pope is very well clued in on this issue, that even before he became pope he had access to the documentation, and that he know exactly what was in the documentation, and that he wasn’t living in a fool’s paradise,” Duffy said.
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday. Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices. The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms. In the most recent inspection, 144 products from
The US on Monday confirmed that it would resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, as concerns over human rights in the kingdom’s Yemen war give way to US hopes for it to play a role in resolving the conflict in Gaza. More than three years after imposing limits on human rights grounds over Saudi Arabian strikes in Yemen, the US Department of State said that it would return to weapons sales “in regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.” “Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,”
Russia yesterday ordered more evacuations in a region bordering Ukraine as it battled to contain an unprecedented push onto its territory by Kyiv’s forces. Ukraine last week sent troops into Russia’s border region of Kursk, in the largest cross-border operation by Kyiv since Moscow launched its offensive more than two years ago. The assault, which has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing, marked the most significant attack by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II. A top Ukrainian official said that the operation was aimed at stretching Moscow troops and destabilizing the nation after months of slow Russian advances
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five