Irish Archbishop Who Died in ’73 Is Linked to Abuse
New York Times
By
DUBLIN — The former archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, widely regarded as the most powerful Catholic prelate in modern Irish history, stands accused of serial child sexual abuse, The Irish Times newspaper said Thursday.
Two specific complaints and a separate unspecified “concern” against an unidentified cleric were reported to the Murphy Commission, a state-sponsored investigation into the handling of clerical sexual abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese. The newspaper reported that Archbishop McQuaid, who retired in 1972 and died a year later, was the unidentified cleric.
The commission published its main report in 2009, but it said that “due to human error” the latest allegations emerged only in a supplementary report published in July. This does not name Archbishop McQuaid, but the newspaper is adamant that the allegations of abuse contained within it refer to the archbishop. One allegation is regarding abuse of a 12-year-old boy in 1961.
“The supplementary report records that in June/July 2009, as the commission was completing its main report, it received information which would have ‘brought another cleric’ within its remit,” Patsy McGarry, the newspaper’s religious affairs correspondent, said in an interview. The archdiocese “found a letter ‘which showed that there was an awareness among a number of people in the archdiocese that there had been a concern expressed about this cleric in 1999,’ the report states. The ‘cleric’ is Archbishop McQuaid.”
The main body of the Murphy report was highly critical of Archbishop McQuaid’s attitude toward abuse, accusing him of showing “no concern for the welfare of children.” However, this is the first suggestion that the official body had received specific complaints against Archbishop McQuaid, who was at the very apex of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland for three decades.
In a statement, a victims’ group, One in Four, called for a statutory inquiry into the accusations, saying that “if Archbishop McQuaid was, as is alleged, a sex offender himself, then it is no wonder that the secrecy and cover-ups which have characterized the church’s handling of sexual abuse was so entrenched.”
The archdiocese told the newspaper that the police were investigating the matters dealt with in the supplementary report. There is also a separate civil action being taken against the archdiocese by one complainant.
EIGHT FALSELY ACCUSED BISHOPS
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Eight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland
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Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (slandered by Dr Noel Browne and John Cooney) |
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Cardinal Archbishop Cahal Daly (slandered by Deputy Pat Rabbitte) |
Background:
This article started as an “open letter” to several Irish historians on 7 December 2006, with a follow-up 10 days later. Both were published at the time by the “Alliance Victim Support Group” on its website AllianceSupport.org. I think that the Group which was founded in 1999, disbanded recently and there is just a skeletal website remaining. The first two letters refer to false allegations against six Irish Bishops – including two Archbishops (John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and Cahal Daly of Armagh – pictured above). In June 2008 I forwarded copies of the two to Brenda Power of the Sunday Times in response to an article she had written concerning the effects of false allegations of sexual assault. By this time there had been an additional allegation against a former Archbishop i.e. Thomas Morris of Cashel and I also recalled that Mary Raftery had slandered the former Bishop of Ossary, Peter Birch. Bishop Birch had been widely admired for his work among the poor by many people – including by my own mentor Brother Maurice Kirk.
All of the falsely accused Bishops were extremely high-profile – including three Archbishops. There are only four Archdioceses in Ireland and I have joked over the years that an Archbishop of Tuam – either current or deceased – is obviously next on our anti-clerics hit-list. Actually it has already occurred – but more on this later!
EIGHT Falsely Accused Bishops
Monday, 23 June, 2008
From: “Rory Connor”
To: Brenda Power, Sunday Times
Brenda Power
The Sunday Times
Regarding your article “It’s the Innocent who Merit an Explanation” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4188284.ece
you may like to look at the following two articles which have appeared on the http://www.alliancesupport.org website.
The letters were originally addressed to a number of Irish Historians – and cced to Colm O’Gorman of the “victims” group One in Four for obvious reasons.
A total of 8 Bishops have been falsely accused of sex offences in Ireland – including 3 Archbishops. There are only 26 full Bishops in the country including 4 Archbishops so the Archbishop of Tuam is presumably next on our liberals hit list!
The following articles dated December 2006 relate to 6 Bishops. There has been one subsequent case – the late Archbishop Thomas Morris of Cashel [1] and incredibly I had overlooked one case – that of the late Bishop Peter Birch of Ossory (Kilkenny) [2].
Finally the hysteria about sex crimes is not indiscriminate or at least it didn’t begin that way. It was first directed at the Catholic Church and then spread to the rest of society. To counter it you need to start with the obscene lies directed at Churchmen.
Regards
Rory Connor
[1] See “Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O’Grady” on http://www.alliancesupport.org on 17 January 2007.
Relevant Link: Archbishop Thomas Morris and Oliver O’Grady
[2] Included in the article “Vincent Browne, Mary Raftery and Sister Conception” on http://www.alliancesupport.org on 21 July 2006.
Relevant Link Bishop Birch and Mary Raftery
Originally SIX Falsely Accused Bishops
‘One in Four’ Bishops – as per Colm O’Gorman!
Ladies, Gentlemen and Scholars,
- John Charles McQuaid was the best known Irish prelate of the 20th Century. He was Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland.
- Cathal Daly was Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
- John Magee of Cloyne is the only man in the history of the Church to have been Private Secretary to three Popes (Paul VI, John Paul 1 and John Paul 11)
- Bishops Eamonn Casey and Brendan Comiskey are very well known prelates who had frequent dealings with the media
- I am reasonably sure I know the identity of the un-named Bishop who was accused by the UK Guardian in 1994. He is no “Auxiliary” either!
- Our lying intellectuals tend to concentrate on the “big shots” in the Catholic Church and disdain mere Auxiliary Bishops. Thus I think my “One in Four” proportion is still valid.
[19 December 2006]
False Allegation against Former Archbishop(s) of Tuam
Over the years I have joked that Irish “liberals” who slandered three of our four Archbishops, were bound to take aim at the Archbishop of Tuam. Actually it happened a few years ago but I didn’t fully appreciate its significance at the time. In June 2014 the Jesuit magazine “America” persuaded the Associated Press to issue an apology for claiming that the Catholic Church had refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers at the mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secour nuns. Senior Editor Kevin Clarke wrote in “The Galway Horror Part II”
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii
“Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.” It is a sentence, unattributed to any source, which repeats—either word for word or in a close approximation—in hundreds of articles concerning the now infamous deaths and burials of hundreds of children in Tuam, Galway between 1925 and 1961. This appalling sacramental indifference is referenced in major U.S. and U.K. publications and cited in leading online opinion journals like Salon as more evidence of the cruelty of the Bon Secours sisters who ran the home and the Catholic Church in Ireland in general.
The text of the apology is as follows:
DUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 [2014] about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.
The journalists who published those lies were aiming at the Bon Secour nuns in particular and at the Catholic Church in general. However it is the clergy and not nuns, who would have made that decision and the local priest would certainly have referred an issue of such rarity and importance to his Bishop – or in this case to the Archbishop of Tuam. According all four Irish Archbishops have now been subjected to obscene lies by our “liberal” media!
If our journalists – and politicians – were targeting Protestant Archbishops or the Chief Rabbi of Ireland with such lies, no one would be in any doubt as to their motivation!
The Bell Society 