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The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of CBS News 60 Minutes
Posted: March 13th, 2012
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390125.html
An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin says the Catholic Church in Ireland has reached a breaking point, a crisis that he says results from the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church. Martin has provided tens of thousands of pages of evidence against specific priests, and his words and actions carry extraordinary weight. That's because Diarmuid Martin is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. There's overwhelming evidence that the Church hierarchy was not only aware of the sexual abuse, but did little about it. The Dublin Archdiocese knew who the predator priests were, even wrote reports about them but then locked up the files. Investigators on a state panel, the Murphy Commission, asked for the files, but the Church refused until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop. The documents revealed that one priest admitted abusing over a hundred children. Another said he abused children twice a month for 25 years. Archbishop Martin believes thousands of children suffered similar fates. Martin: Abuse isn't [just] the actual sexual acts, which are horrendous, but sexual abuse of a child is ... a total abuse of power. It's actually saying to a child, "I control you." And that is saying to the child, "You're worthless."
Note: To see the video of this important piece, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on sexual abuse by the powerful, click here.
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