The Vatican has acknowledged the “harm done to victims and their families” identified in a Government-commissioned report which set out almost 2,400 allegations of abuse in schools.
A scoping inquiry, led by senior counsel Mary O’Toole, has detailed 2,395 allegations of abuse against 884 alleged abusers. The inquiry deals with 308 schools involving 42 religious congregations of the 69 that run schools in Ireland.
The inquiry found almost a quarter of the abuse allegations – 590 – involved just 17 schools that catered for children with special needs.
The Vatican said it had an “ongoing commitment for abuses never to be tolerated and for child safeguarding procedures and guidelines to be stringent and fully enforced”.
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It said the “Holy See joins the Catholic Education Partnership in Ireland and the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in acknowledging the importance of the report, as well as the harm done to victims and their families”.
The comments were made in a statement issued by Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See press office, to Liam O’Brien, producer of Blackrock Boys, the RTÉ Radio 1 documentary that highlighted the abuse suffered by former students of Blackrock College in Dublin.
Meanwhile, Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy told church congregations on Sunday that the “cries of abuse pierce heaven”.
In a statement read out in parishes in the Limerick diocese, Bishop Leahy said the destruction of innocence and of people’s lives was beyond comprehension. “As much as we try, there is no combination of words that can match the pain and evil inflicted. The whirl of the reports of devastation visited upon these survivors is a sword also through our own hearts.”
Schools run by Religious Orders should have been places of “sacred trust and care” but “turned out to be locations of nightmarish horrors”.
He described the abusers as perpetrators “of the most horrific and vile crimes that destroyed young lives”.
He said he was grateful to the scoping inquiry for its work and urged anyone who has suffered abuse to come forward and report it to the statutory authorities or church authorities.
“To do so is an important first step in gaining an interior freedom from what is so often an inner trauma and turmoil. And justice must be brought to bear against this evil.”
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It was a “desperately difficult moment also for members of religious orders, many of whom are now elderly and who lived their life of vocation with love and kindness, impacting positively on so many”, he said. “We must not forget them today. They are suffering the experience of seeing so much good work done by their congregations to which they committed their lives, now being emptied before their eyes.”
[ Full list of 308 schools and case numbers detailedOpens in new window ]
He led prayers asking for God’s forgiveness “for the foul actions of those who committed abuse”.
“We commend to your mercy those who allowed habits of passivity to keep them silent before evil. We seek your compassion for those who found themselves bystanders of terrible deeds and are now troubled in conscience. We ask your pardon for the guilt of those in positions of responsibility who failed to take appropriate action,” he said.
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