An inquiry into the Irish Catholic Church’s abuse scandals has found evidence of further cover-ups after it discovered that a rural diocese and its bishop ignored Irish church rules requiring all suspected molestation cases to be reported to police officials, and that the Vatican was aware of and encouraged this concealment.
The Irish government, who ordered the investigation into 1996-2009 cover-ups in the County Cork Diocese of Cloyne, warned that parishes across their country could pose a further danger to children’s welfare. It pointed out that Cloyne promised to be adhering to church child-protection policy while actually ignoring it.
The Justice Minister in charge of the investigation, Alan Shatter promised to enforce a law making it an imprisonable crime to withhold knowledge of suspected child abuse and added that pledges by Irish church leaders to place Irish civil law first and report all abuse cases dating back to 1995 had been “built on sand.”
Shatter said he was concerned that other dioceses, who are yet to be investigated, were withholding similar crimes and therefore posed an ongoing threat to children.
The document details the church’s suppression of information on 19 suspected child-abusing priests, according to The Washington Times.