An editorial in the current issue of influential English Catholic weekly the Tablethas recommended that an international commission be set up to review what occurred and why with the Vatican's handling of clerical child sex abuse and to make recommendations.
It noted that the Murphy report described, in the words of Msgr John Dolan, chancellor of the Dublin archdiocese, how in 1996 the Irish bishops “did not feel Rome was supporting them in dealing with this issue . . . they were meeting an onslaught of complaints and Rome was pulling any particular solid ground that they had from under them.”
It continued, “so far there has been little evidence that the Vatican accepts responsibility for what went wrong [in Ireland].”
“A great service to the church and to the truth would be done” if an international commission was set up to do so, it said.