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A senior member of the Catholic Church has provoked outrage after he said he would not stop a child being abused if it breached the confidentiality of a paedophile.
Monsignor Maurice Dooley was speaking amid calls for Cardinal Brady’s resignation over a failure to tell police about one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priests, Father Brendan Smyth.
The head of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been under pressure since it emerged he asked two of the priest’s victims, aged 10 and 14, to sign secrecy agreements 35 years ago. Fr Smyth was eventually convicted of dozens of offences against children — but it was almost 20 years before he was brought to justice.
Defending the cardinal’s silence in 1975, Monsignor Dooley said he would not refer sex crimes against children to police today if passed information confidentially. The monsignor, who has spent over 50 years in the priesthood, also said he would protect a paedophile priest who confided his crimes to him today because the law was on his side. “I would not tell anyone,” he said.
“That is his responsibility. I am considering only my responsibility. My responsibility is to maintain the confidentiality of information which I had been given under the contract of confidentiality. “There must be somebody else aware of what he is up to and he could be stopped. “It is not my function.”
Originally posted by parsman
Can't the Police force priests to tell them stuff?Can't Magistrates or Judges do anything?