Church faces public fury in N Ireland

BY PIERS MCGRANDLE
THE CATHOLIC Church in Northern Ireland was plunged this week into its worst crisis for centuries, after yet more allegations about paedophile priests emerged.
. The latest case concerns a girl from Londonderry, who as an eight-year-old in 1988 was allegedly sexually assaulted by her local priest. The priest has since left the diocese and is now said to be in a monastery in the Irish Republic.
The family claimed that they complained to authorities three years ago, but the Church was non-committal in response and refused to send any representatives to meet them. Bishop, Dr Seamus Hegarty of Derry has since asked for a meeting with the family of the young girl.
The bishop, who denied that the Church had covered up sex abuse claims, said "one must be extremely careful in a situation like this because there are many sensitivities involved".
Public reaction to the issue of child abuse has proved infinitely more damaging than the Bishop Casey affair, which generated intense publicity but little long-term damage.
The Church faces an angry onilaught from the media and the public outrage at its reluctance to divulge why it did not inform civil authorities of evidence of sex abuse by its priests.
The Londonderry case is the latest in a series of accusations against Church officials. Last Sunday the RUC confirmed that it was investigating another allegation of abuse, made by a former altar boy against an official of the Catholic Church in Co Down.
In June, Fr Brendan Smyth, a 67-year-old priest from the Norbertine Order and a "fixated paedophile", was convicted of offences against five girls and three boys who he abused at their homes or in orphanages.
In another, bizarre case, a parish priest in Co Galway was given a 15-month suspended sentence after sexually molesting a male teenage hitch-hiker.
To compound the Church's embturassement, a priest who collapsed and died in a Dublin gay club this month was given the last rites by two other colleagues present.
In a statement on child abuse read at the Bishops' Conference this autumn, the bishops said "child sex abuse by a priest is especially heinous, not only because it is evil in itself but because it is the violation of a sacred trust. We are coming to realise the complexity of this problem and the enormity of the suffering it causes".