THE DEATH has taken place of Prof Barry Raftery, emeritus professor of archaeology at UCD.

Prof Raftery, who was recognised as the country’s leading scholar on the archaeology of later prehistoric societies, was appointed to the chair of Celtic archaeology in UCD in 1996.

He was visiting professor of European prehistory in Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich in 1969-70, and was visiting professors at Kiel University (1991) and the University of Vienna (1997).

He received numerous research awards. A former senior vice-president of the Royal Irish Academy, he also held membership of the German Archaeological Institute and was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1995.

His early postgraduate work was on hill forts, and he published the first overview of the form and roles of such sites in Ireland. This also led to the excavation of a critically important site at Rathgall, Co Wicklow.

His doctoral research, on the Irish Iron Age, resulted in two major books: A Catalogue of Irish Iron Age Antiquities (1983), and La Tène in Ireland: Problems of Origin, Development and Chronology (1984).

He played a major role in the international Celtic exhibition in Venice in the early 1990s, which resulted in a landmark volume, The Celts (1991), of which he was an editor, and his own book, Pagan Celtic Ireland (1994).

Prof Raftery, who was in his mid-60s, died at St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, on Sunday, following a long illness. He is survived by his wife Nuala and daughters Sara and Tilly.

His removal takes place this evening to the Church of Mary Immaculate, Refuge of Sinners, Rathmines, arriving at 5pm. Following funeral Mass in Rathmines at 10am tomorrow he will be buried in the cemetery of St Mary’s, Glenfarne, Co Leitrim.

via Celtic scholar Barry Raftery dies – The Irish Times – Tue, Aug 24, 2010

RIP Dr. Raftery, you will be missed.

The Irish Department of the Environment has launched an investigation into the complete destruction of two ancient ring-forts. Senior archaeologists from its National Monuments section are liaising with gardaí in Co Cork as part of the probe. The investigation was launched following works on farmland in the village of Kilmurry near Macroom, Co Cork, on which the two recorded monuments were located.

There are about 100,000 ring-forts recorded across Ireland; of these, only about 250 have so far been subjected to archaeological excavation. They are oval or circular fortified settlements or farmsteads that were built mostly during the Early Christian and Iron Age periods. These structures date from about 600 BCE to about 1,000 CE and some were still inhabited up until the 1700s. They were owned by wealthy individuals who built houses and kept cattle inside the earthen ditches.

The two ring-forts at the centre of this investigation were considered among the region’s finer examples. One was oval and measured almost 60m in an east-west direction, 48m in a north-south direction, and was enclosed by a two-metre high earthen bank. Archaeologists had found the remains of cultivation ridges crossing its interior. The other ring-fort was circular and slightly smaller, measuring just more than 33 metres, and was surrounded by a two-metre high earthen ditch. It featured numerous cattle gaps across its bank.  However, both structures have been completely leveled. No above-ground trace remains. All their earthen banks have been removed and filled in.

Under the terms of Irish National Monuments Legislation, landowners are required to give at least four week’s notice to the Department of the Environment about their intention to carry out works near recorded monuments. This did not happen in this case. The Friends of the Irish Environment group has now written to Environment Minister John Gormley calling for the full weight of the law to be brought to bear in this case.

Sources: Irish Examiner.com (9 August 2010), The Irish Times (10 August 2010)

via Stone Pages Archaeo News: Two ancient Irish ring-forts destroyed.

MALVERN, Pa. (AP) ― Young and strapping, the 57 Irish immigrants began grueling work in the summer of 1832 on the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad. Within weeks, all were dead of cholera.

Or were they murdered?

Two skulls unearthed at a probable mass grave near Philadelphia this month showed signs of violence, including a possible bullet hole. Another pair of skulls found earlier at the woodsy site also displayed traumas, seeming to confirm the suspicions of two historians leading the archaeological dig.

“This was much more than a cholera epidemic,” William Watson said.

Watson, chairman of the history department at nearby Immaculata University, and his twin brother Frank have been working for nearly a decade to unravel the 178-year-old mystery.

Anti-Irish sentiment made 19th-century America a hostile place for the workers, who lived amid wilderness in a shanty near the railroad tracks. The land is now preserved open space behind suburban homes in Malvern, about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.

The Watsons and their research team have recovered seven sets of remains since digging up the first shin bone in March 2009, following years of fruitlessly scouring the area for the men’s final resting place. One victim has been tentatively identified, pending DNA tests.

The brothers have long hypothesized that many of the workers succumbed to cholera, a bacterial infection spread by contaminated water or food. The disease was rampant at the time, and had a typical mortality rate of 40 percent to 60 percent.

The other immigrants, they surmise, were killed by vigilantes because of anti-Irish prejudice, tension between affluent residents and poor transient workers, or intense fear of cholera — or a combination of all three.

Now, their theory is supported by the four recovered skulls, which indicate the men probably suffered blows to the head. At least one may have been shot, said Janet Monge, an anthropologist working on the project.

“I don’t think we need to be so hesitant in coming to the conclusion now that violence was the cause of death and not cholera, although these men might have had cholera in addition,” Monge said.

Other findings: Coffin nails commingled with the remains establish that at least some workers received formal burials; bones indicate the laborers were muscular despite relatively poor diets; and teeth reveal the men were not wealthy enough to afford the sugary sweets that cause cavities.

“They do have indications on their skeletons that life was not a bowl of cherries,” said Monge, who is also the keeper of skeletal collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The Watsons learned in 2002 of the workers’ demise from the personal papers of their late grandfather, who worked for the railroad long after the men died. Their quest, called The Duffy’s Cut Project, is named for Philip Duffy, who hired the Irishmen to build a section of railroad known as a cut.

When the immigrants died in August 1832, Duffy ordered his blacksmith to burn the shanty for sanitary reasons and bury the bodies in the railroad fill, the Watsons say. The men’s families were never told of their deaths.

A passenger list for the John Stamp, a ship that sailed from Ireland to Philadelphia four months earlier, offers possible identities for 15 workers who came from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry counties.

Early on, the Watsons tentatively identified one victim as 18-year-old John Ruddy, based on bone size and the ship’s manifest. They have since found a section of teeth with a rare genetic anomaly — a missing upper molar that never formed — shared by some Ruddy family members in Ireland. Researchers hope for DNA confirmation in about six months.

Excavation of the burial site and the shanty, aided by ground-penetrating radar, has proved a whirlwind education in anatomy and archaeology for the 47-year-old brothers. Both earned doctorates in history but, science-wise, have nothing more than an introductory college biology class under their belts.

“It has been indeed a crash course,” Frank Watson said, “and it’s been fascinating.”

To compensate, they have surrounded themselves with experts — including Monge and a retired coroner, forensic dentist, geophysicist and a graduate student in bioarchaeology — who share the brothers’ enthusiasm and have volunteered their help.

“They’re as professional a team as any one I’ve seen out there on a site,” Monge said.

The brothers see the project as a way to document early 19th-century attitudes about industry, immigration and disease in Pennsylvania. Their ultimate goal is to recover all the remains, identify the men and inter them properly, either here or in Ireland.

Michael Collins, Ireland’s ambassador to the U.S., visited Duffy’s Cut last summer and said in remarks at Immaculata University that it’s an important story to tell.

Immaculata has provided some funding, but the brothers are seeking grants for further DNA tests, archival research in Ireland and a Celtic cross to mark a new grave at a nearby cemetery for any remains that are not repatriated.

“We see this more as a recovery mission,” William Watson said. “Get them out of this ignominious burial place.”

___

Online: www.duffyscutproject.com

via Old Irish Bones May Yield Murderous Secrets In Pa. – cbs5.com.

To Saint Canice’s, then, in the ancient city of Kilkenny, its ninth-century round tower still watching for Viking invaders, home of the forgotten Gaelic Irish-Old English Confederation, its citizens spared by Cromwell.

And there in the nave are the tombs of John, Second Marquess of Ormonde, Margaret and Piers Butler and Richard Butler and Margaret Fitzgerald, righteous beneath their effigies. Larkin could have composed his verses here.

Side by side, their faces blurred,

The earl and countess lie in stone

Their proper habits vaguely shown

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,

And that faint hint of the absurd –

The little dogs under their feet

Yet as I pad beneath the vaulted wooden ceiling and run my hands over these stone effigies, I realise that they have no faces, just rough gashes which have sliced off their noses and ears and eyes. The 17th-century English Taliban, with their axes and swords, were at work here, hacking away the images of the knights of Ireland. Angry Cromwell’s New Model Army must have been, for one poor knight has not only lost his face. An English soldier, way back in 1650, plunged a pike or a dagger into the man’s codpiece and then – here comes the sign of fury – attacked that faint hint of the absurd. The little dog upon which the knight’s feet rest has been beheaded.

Fresh from the slaughter at Drogheda, Cromwell would spare the citizens of Kilkenny, but not its Cathedral of Saint Canice whose stonemasons packed their bags in 1285. Cromwell smashed the stained glass windows, stole the bells, threw the baptismal font to the ground and turned the cathedral into a stables. His soldiers broke open the tombs and hurled the bones of their lords and ladies into a pit in the churchyard. The half-Irish writer Constantine Fitzgibbon noted almost 40 years ago: “If Cromwell and his people had possessed the technical ability to build gas chambers and drop Zyklon B upon the Irish Roman Catholic subhumans … they would undoubtedly have used such methods.”

So much, then, for the Great Rebellion of 1641. So much for the king’s men. The New Model Army was the first ideological battle group since the Crusaders. Why, had not the Parliament of England passed a decree for the absolute suppression of the Catholic religion in Ireland? Traitors and infidels. Smash their graven images. Smash the Buddhas of Bamian, for that matter. The real Taliban used explosives. Cromwell’s armed puritans used the sword. No dancing. No music. No films or television or kite-flying. Read the Bible – only the Bible. Read the Koran – only the Koran. What’s the difference? Cromwell and Mullah Omar did everything in the name of God.

Thus did I reflect as – in those slightly grim moments that always precede a lecture – I prepared to bore a cathedral audience of hundreds with my usual paint pots. Treachery in the Middle East, Iraqi slaughter, Afghan bloodbaths, the connivance of governments and journalists, the lies inherent in our words of war, the need for our military – with their guns and tanks and Apache helicopters – to leave the Muslim lands.

Yet just to my right as I spoke lay a plaque of white marble, the memorial tablet of one General Sir Arthur Pack (of this parish, of course) who fought and was wounded at Sevastopol in the Crimean War. Unwounded at Sevastopol was Lawrence Knox, another Irishman who would go on to found The Irish Times. Knox had even ridden over to the site of the preposterous charge of the Light Brigade and wrote in his diary on 31 May 1854 that there were “still numerous skeletons of horses laying about and one skeleton of a man in the 11th Hussars who still had on his red cherry-coloured trousers and was laying on his back … So I suppose he lay down there and died”.

In the Crimea, we were fighting the Russians. On our side were France and Sardinia and – Turkey. The charge of the Light Brigade, Sevastopol, was fought with Muslims as our allies. We were trying to stop Russia encroaching on the Ottoman empire – which just over 60 years later would be genociding the Armenian Christians and fighting us. Come to think of it, Knox did later come across “a young woman … laying on a sofa with her throat cut and it was supposed to have been done by the Turks”.

So there I was, giving the Hubert Butler Lecture – he being a distant descendant of the Butlers in those plundered tombs, a journalist, writer and historian with an Anglo-Irishman’s “savage indignation” to rival that of Jonathan Swift. After helping to save the Jews of Austria from the Nazis, he spent years investigating the life of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, the vicious Catholic prelate – friend of the wartime Nazi surrogate in Croatia, Ante Pavelic – who spent four years campaigning for the forcible conversion of Orthodox Serbs. (The alternative was to have your head sawn off by the Ustashe murderers at Jasenovac extermination camp.) Butler discovered that Pavelic’s even more outrageous interior minister, Andrija Artukovic, had spent a pleasant post-war year in Ireland, under an assumed name and with the help, of course, of the Catholic Church.

But his revelations about Stepinac earned Butler the Cromwell-like hatred of the same Catholic Church in Ireland. He was pilloried in the press and insulted by the Papal Nuncio. Kilkenny County Council expelled Butler from one of its subcommittees and he was forced to give up the honourary secretaryship of a local archaeological society which he himself had founded. Taliban purity was what he lacked.

At the post-lecture Kilkenny Festival dinner, some of us debated the desire to be intolerant, to smash tombs and graven images and Muslims – first we fought for them, then we fought against them – and destroy the happiness of men like Butler. I blamed God. And so to bed.

via UK Independent

AssociatedPress — June 15, 2010 — A British report found that U.K. troops unjustly killed 13 Catholic protesters in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday in 1972. Victims’ relatives cheered after Prime Minister David Cameron announced the results of the long inquiry in Parliament.

38 years later and they finally admit it. Did anyone go to prison over it?

Travellers, “the people of walking,” are often referred to as the Gypsies of Ireland. Mistrusted for the most part, their traditions and lifestyle are not well understood within the larger culture. Historically, they were nomads who moved in caravans and lived in encampments on the side of the road. Their tradition as “tinkers” or tinsmiths, and as the breeders and traders of some of Ireland’s best horses, goes back hundreds of years.

As times change in Ireland and the notions of private and public space change and contract, the culture no longer accepts the Travellers on public and private lands and has begun to create “halts” where they can settle.

Helen Connors, 21, lives in Hazel Hill, a new government experiment in Traveller housing on the lower slopes of Dublin Mountain, with her husband and two children.

“Travellers got their name because they're so fond of traveling around the world in a caravan,” she says. “They’d have their wagons and their horses. You’d see them along the roadside. You could be in Dublin today; you could be in Cork tomorrow. That’s how Travellers got their name. We call you ‘settled people.’ ”

“Travelling girls don’t really mix much with settled girls,” says Shirley Martin, a 23-year-old mother of three. “The way of living, caravans, by the side of the road. A come and go thing. My family is a Travelling family.”

Life In School Hard For Travellers

There are similarities between Traveller and Romany Gypsy culture, but Travellers do not define themselves as Romany, says Mary Burke, associate professor of Irish literature at the University of Connecticut.

For many generations, Travellers — the nomadic, indigenous Irish minority — provided services to an Ireland that was predominantly agricultural: seasonal farm labor, tinsmithing, horse-trading, hawking, music and entertainment.

The Irish government is experimenting with housing for Travellers — the Gypsies of Ireland — on the lower slopes of Dublin Mountain. The houses are called “halts.” Today, the majority of Travellers either live in houses permanently or live in houses at certain times of the year.

In the early days Travellers moved from place to place with horses and carts. British Romany introduced Travellers to wagons. The wagons were overtaken by caravans, and the caravans were overtaken by mobile homes. But today the majority of Travellers either live in houses permanently or live in houses at certain times of the year.

“But that doesn’t mean that prejudice or identity disappear when they settle in houses,” Burke says.

Read the rest via For Traveller Women In Ireland, Life Is Changing : NPR.

• Hat Tip: Nikki

I want to offer another perspective on the escalating scandal within the Catholic Church, and to alert readers to a good recent essay on these sordid topics.[1] In “The Pattern of Priestly Sex Abuse,” Harriet Fraad offers some important data many of us didn’t know.

Figures from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, for example, estimate that since 1950, about 280,000 children have been sexually abused by Catholic clergy and deacons. With the shame and denial that accompany sexual abuse, the real number must be much higher.

Worse, this is not just a recent phenomenon. Father Thomas Doyle, a priest, and Richard Sipes and Patrick Wall, former monks, have written that the Catholic Church has recognized the problem of abuse by priests for 2,000 years. Their book, “Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse” (Volt Press, 2006) was based on the church’s own documents.

And far from being the case of a few bad apples, Brooks Egerton and Reese Dunklin have reported that even eight years ago, two-thirds of sitting US bishops have been accused of moving pedophile priests to new assignments.[2] It is not the apples that are bad; it’s the barrel.

Under authoritarian rule – whether political or religious – the high ideals preached by leaders have no necessary connection to their behavior. That is the disconnect, the lack of integrity, between a church preaching Jesus while practicing sexual abuse of “the least among us” – then covering it up by moving pedophiles to fresh flocks.

It’s worth recalling a couple of teachings from this man Jesus, who hangs on the front wall of every Catholic church.

He measured the quality of our belief by whatever we do to “the least of these,” and said what we do to them, we do also to him. He said those who mislead children would be better off with a millstone around their neck, thrown into the sea. And he thought these were among the bedrocks of decency that should be obvious to all “with eyes to see and ears to hear.” This is part of the background against which any individual or church calling itself Christian must be judged.

Authoritarian leaders and institutions can blind us to the abuse of children, women, other races, sexual orientations or beliefs. They are always prone to making God their hand puppet, so He believes the same as they do. Far too often, they have turned children into mere playthings, used for the selfish desires of the priests and deacons – or left unprotected from the abuse of others.

The Catholic Church has been a great and important institution for many centuries, and much of what it has done is very good. But beneath the surface, the church’s unwillingness to integrate all the children of God into their priesthood – including women, married couples and gays. They remain trapped in a one-sexed institution, often attracting men who like to be around other men, and some whose natural perversion or moral blindness have led them to see children as appropriate sexual objects.

The consistent abuse of children by priests is not a peripheral facet of the Catholic Church; it is the logical consequence of an entrenched male hierarchy’s inbred sense of its own privilege. Of course, such behavior is the antithesis of the ideals Jesus taught. But that is another way of saying that the Catholic Church can too easily become the mortal enemy of those high ideals that are the church’s only justification for existing.

The worldwide outcry from people representing the entire religious spectrum is saying Enough! Enough of these men pretending they have the moral authority to preach on matters of sex, about which they remain so willfully ignorant. Enough pretending that their habitual abuse, secrecy and cover-ups should be tolerated by anyone – especially the victimized children and their families, and the societies that make them tax-free because they have been seen as a healthy and stabilizing part of the larger world around them. Enough of priestly myopia that lacks the eyes to see even the most heart-breaking of their transgressions.

For twenty centuries, according to the church’s own records, a dangerous and frightening number of its priests and popes have been unable to see these abuses as evil. The current outrage – which must also have roots 2,000 years deep – comes not only from Catholics, but also from millions of others, whether they care for religion or not. People the world over are trying to say that there is something fundamentally and intolerably wrong with the church and its popes, when these moral commandments are screaming so loudly that even 200 deaf boys could hear them.

[1] “Priests and Pedophilia: What Authoritarian Religion, Families & Schools Have Wrought” (posted in Tikkun and Alternet, 30 March 2010).

[2] Front page above the fold, The Dallas Morning News, June 12, 2002.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

via t r u t h o u t | For Those With Ears to Hear.

“Much of this violence,” he declared, “has a sexual background.”  Yes, let’s start there.  In 2001, a year before the pedophilia crisis hit the news, the National Catholic Reporter analyzed internal church reports written by two Catholic nuns—a physician who was a Medical Missionary of Mary and the AIDS coordinator for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development—documenting the sexual exploitation of nuns by priests in 23 countries on five continents.

One of the most stunning allegations concerned a nun impregnated by a priest, who forced her to have an abortion that killed her and then officiated at her funeral.  Priests were alleged to have raped young nuns who approached them for the required certificates to enter religious orders; to have told nuns that oral contraceptives would protect them from AIDS; and to have used nuns as “safe” alternatives to prostitutes in countries plagued by AIDS—with some priests going so far as to demand that heads of convents make the nuns sexually available to them.

Representative Bart “I-don’t-call-up-the-nuns” Stupak—who at that point, like the bishops, opposed health care reform for being insufficiently pro-life—tried to minimize their power, but it is real. It is why the Vatican has launched two confidential investigations into the lives of American nuns—not American bishops. One is examining the “quality” of their religious lives; the other is focused on their alleged “doctrinal” failures—like questioning an all-male priesthood.

[...]

It is Catholic women who have written about gender-inclusive prayer language and been fired for it; defended the rights of gays and lesbians and being silenced for it; fought for women’s ordination and been excommunicated for it; blown the whistle on priest sexual shenanigans and been relieved of their duties for it.

Many of these change-makers are nuns. Witness the 60 leaders of religious orders, representing 90 percent of the 59,000 Catholic women religious in the United States, who defied the American bishops and supported health care reform, insisting that legislation that helped pregnant women was “a REAL pro-life stance.”

via EXCLUSIVE That Notorious Good Friday Homily – WMC Blog.

via March 25, 2010 on BBC Newsnight

Crimen sollicitationis : The document came to light because it was referenced in a footnote to a May 18, 2002, letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, to the bishops of the world regarding new procedures for sex abuse cases.

Crimen sollicitationis is a secret document issued by the Holy Office of the Vatican (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) in 1962, instructing bishops about how to handle cases in which priests were accused of using the privacy of the confessional to make sexual advances to penitents. The document also instructs bishops on how to handle cases of the “worst crime”, in which a priest is sexually involved with an animal, child, or man. Canon lawyers disagree about the extent to which the document is still in force.

The document calls for such cases to be handled in secret, and extends that secrecy to the document itself. The document imposes secrecy even upon victims of sexual abuse. Extreme penalties for violations of secrecy, including excommunication that can only be dismissed by the pope himself, are imposed. Perhaps as a result, some bishops claim not to have known of its existence.

Crimen sollicitationis came to light in 2002, in the context of new procedures for handling accusations that priests had sexually abused minors. Lawyers involved in cases against the church have argued that the document is evidence of obstruction of justice. In response, defenders of church policy have argued that the policy of secrecy extended only to Canon law actions up to and including defrocking of a priest, and would not have prevented a bishop from reporting accusations of child molestation to the civil authorities. They also argue that, because the document was a secret, it is unlikely to have influenced the actions of church officials.

via CRIMEN SOLICITATIONIS FULL ENGLISH TEXT

That Crimen Solicitationis was not designed to “cover up” sex abuse, canonists say, is clear in paragraph 15, which obligates anyone with knowledge of a priest abusing the confessional for that purpose to come forward, under pain of excommunication for failing to do so. This penalty is stipulated, the document says, “lest [the offense] remain occult and unpunished and always with inestimable detriment to souls.”

via National Catholic Reporter.

Therefore, it is clear that the hierarchy of the Church knew about the abuses because to not bring these cases forward was punishable by excommunication. So those who claim they did not know are lying, and those who say they did not tell their superiors should be excommunicated according to this document. If the current Pope did not act on the cases brought to his attention, he too is subject to excommunication.

If the hierarchy of the Church did not bring these cases to law enforcement authorities, as they claim this document does not prevent them from doing so, then why didn’t they act in the interests of the children? That question should be asked of each of them, under oath, in a court of law, and all documents pertaining to child abuse that are possessed by the Vatican and any diocese within the Church should be turned over to prosecutors.

Embattled Cardinal Sean Brady‘s campaign to stay on as head of the Catholic Church in Ireland could be decided today when he holds talks in Armagh with victims of child clerical abuse.

Last night, John Kelly of Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) Ireland said he would tell Cardinal Brady that he needed to be “open” about his future.

Mr Kelly said his charity group would ask the Archbishop of Armagh: “When can we expect his eminence to bring to an end the speculation about his future as cardinal and Primate of All Ireland?”

The pressure on Dr Brady to offer his resignation to Pope Benedict has been intense for a fortnight after he admitted that in 1975, when he was a priest in Co Cavan, he swore two children to secrecy about their brutal abuse by paedophile priest, Brendan Smyth.

Dr Brady has asked for forgiveness and said he was ashamed, but added he would only resign if asked by Pope Benedict. He has also asked to remain as cardinal, as “a wounded healer” to implement fully child protection measures in the church across Ireland.

Read more via Brady to meet survivors – National News, Frontpage – Independent.ie.

The Vatican is launching a legal defence that it hopes will shield the Pope from a US lawsuit seeking to have him answer questions under oath.

Court documents show Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the Pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the “smoking gun” that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first US case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican.

Their lawyer, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

But the Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed.

The preview of the legal defence was submitted last month in US District Court in Louisville. The Vatican’s strategy is to be formally filed in the coming weeks. Vatican officials refused to comment last night.

Plaintiffs in the Kentucky suit argue that US diocesan bishops were employees of the Holy See and that Rome was therefore responsible for their alleged wrongdoing in failing to report abuse. They say a 1962 Vatican document mandated that bishops not report sex abuse cases to police, but the Vatican has argued that there is nothing in the document that prevented bishops from doing so.

With the US scandal revived by reports of abuse in Europe and scrutiny of Benedict’s handling of abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich in Germany, the Kentucky case and another in Oregon have taken on greater significance. Lawyers as far away as Australia have said they plan to use similar strategies.

But the hurdles remain enormously high to force a foreign government to turn over confidential documents, let alone to subject a head of state to questioning by US lawyers, experts say. The US considers the Vatican a sovereign state – the two have had diplomatic relations since 1984.

Press Association

via Vatican launches legal defence – World News, Breaking News – Independent.ie.

Pope Benedict XVI says he won’t be intimidated despite victims’ statements, lawsuits, and complaints amid growing calls for his resignation over the Vatican child abuse scandal.

Addressing crowds in St Peter’s square during a Palm Sunday service, the pope did not directly mention the scandal spreading through Europe and engulfing the Vatican, but alluded to it during his sermon. Faith in God, he said, led “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion”.

Once again, no contrition and no compassion for the victims. The Vatican is more concerned with maintaining a sparkling clean facade than addressing the very real trail of documentary evidence that exists in these child abuse cases.

In Ireland, the leader of the Catholic church has been named in more than 200 civil actions by victims of alleged clerical abuse, putting him under further pressure to resign. The victims claim that Cardinal Seán Brady failed in his duties by neglecting to protect them from paedophile priests and other sex abusers. There is no suggestion that he took part in any abuse.

Legal sources in the republic confirmed that 230 separate victims of alleged clerical abuse are taking the church to court. They said these include five victims of Father Brendan Smyth, one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophiles.

Smyth’s arrest and conviction opened the floodgates for dozens of cases concerning priests abusing children in dioceses all over Ireland, alongside widespread and systemic abuse in church-run orphanages and industrial schools.

Brady has confirmed that he was present at a closed canonical tribunal into the activities of Smyth, who died in jail 13 years ago while serving 12 years for 74 sexual assaults on children.

“Smyth’s victims will argue that the church knew as far back as 1975 that he was abusing children. But the hierarchy’s secret deal with two of his young victims that year left Smyth free to abuse others many years afterwards,” one senior legal source told the Observer.

“The cardinal now faces being named in hundreds of cases, some of which will go through the courts.”

Asked if the church was aware that Brady had been named in so many civil actions through the Irish courts, a spokesman for the Catholic Press Office in Ireland said: “The bishop who occupies the position of primate of all Ireland [Brady] is often named as co-defendant in judicial proceedings by people who mistakenly presume him to be the ‘CEO’ for the Catholic church in Ireland. In answer to your query, I do not know the exact number of cases taken by alleged victims of clerical sex abuse who have named Cardinal Seán Brady in their actions.”

via Pope faces fresh wave of child abuse scandals in Italy | World news | The Observer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hitchens called the pope’s apology a request for “wiggle room” on the “rape and torture of children.”

“It’s funny because in this society… Even in prisons, there is a hierarchy of crimes,” said Maher. “The child molesters are the ones who even hardened criminals shun, or actually kill.”

“This is the one crime no one can think about without vomiting, that the once great, moral church wants wiggle room for,” Hitchens summarized.

“This present pope is the head of a state, a political state, as well as the church. So, it’s not just that the spiritual leader of a big cult is a proven protector of child molesters, but the head of a government is, with- has an embassy in Washington. Well, can he land here from now on? Shouldn’t Congress become seized with the matter? Shouldn’t the European Union be asking, ‘Can this guy travel freely?’ Isn’t he wanted for the foulest crime of all? These are questions that, I promise you, are going to continue being asked.”

via Anderson Cooper 360

Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin - Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

• Cover Part 1 (PDF – 161KB)
• Signature Page (PDF – 111KB)
• Part 1 Beginning (PDF – 39KB)
• Part 1 (PDF – 161KB)
• Cover Part 2 (PDF – 167KB)
• Part 2 (PDF – 2.04MB)
• Cover Appendices (PDF – 163KB)
• Appendices (PDF – 965KB)

The daughter of a man who claims he was abused by a Catholic priest as a child, says the pope knew about the scandal and did nothing to stop it. She adds he should be held accountable. (March 25) – Video by AssociatedPress

THE FIRST moves towards publishing the Bloody Sunday inquiry report began in London yesterday with British government lawyers examining the 5,000-page document to see whether its contents could endanger life or jeopardise British national security.

The Bloody Sunday families and the British soldiers responsible for the shootings on January 30th, 1972, that killed 13 men, with a 14th dying some months later, are likely to have to wait several more weeks before they learn the findings of the inquiry.

via Families may have to wait weeks for findings – The Irish Times – Thu, Mar 25, 2010.

38 years and the families still wait.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

via Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest – NYTimes.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you feel the pope’s letter was enough?

It’s a study in the fine art of lying and actually betraying your own people. . . . He starts by saying that he’s writing with great concern for the people of Ireland. If he was that concerned, why has it taken him 23 years to write a letter, and why did he or the last pope never get on an airplane and come to meet the victims in any of these countries and apologize?

The letter sells the Irish [church] hierarchy downriver by stating again and again that the Irish hierarchy has somehow acted independently of the Vatican. . . . The documents are there to prove that that’s a lie. . . .

If you were the boss of a company and some of the employees of your company were known to sexually abuse children, you would fire them instantly. You would also go instantly to meet the people who had been abused and profusely apologize and offer your help in any way whatsoever to deal with this. . . . That has never happened.

As a cardinal, the pope wrote an order in 2001 demanding that abuse cases be dealt with in secret. But doesn’t the directive also mention cooperating with civil authorities?

That document stated that all matters of abuse were to be sent to him in Rome, where he would decide whether they would be dealt with by Rome or locally by the bishops. They were to be dealt with exclusively by the church, and they were subject to pontifical secret, which means you can be excommunicated if you breach the secret. . . .

[It's true that] it’s the first time ever that any document coming from the Vatican actually does say to the clergy that they should cooperate with civil authorities. . . . What I object to here is, the first time they said that was 2001. They knew back in 1987 at least that this was an issue. . . . They knew so much that they took out an insurance policy.

So what should the pope do?

There should be a full criminal investigation of the Catholic hierarchy of any country in which this has been an issue. There should be a full criminal investigation of the Vatican.

There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope. The pope should stand down for the fact that he did not act in a Christian fashion to protect children, and for the fact that his organization acted to preserve their business interests decade after decade rather than be concerned about the interests of children, and for showing so much disrespect for Christ, God, the victims, the rest of us, their own clergy. . . .

The Vatican and the pope need to get on their knees and confess the full truth in the same language they make us use in Mass. . . . They need to get on their knees, open everything up, be transparent, tell the truth, ask the people for forgiveness and prayers.

That confession is their only hope of survival into the 21st century. It’s a rickety bridge, but it is a bridge. And personally, I would be willing to bring them across that little bridge into the 21st century and help them. . . .

If they don’t do that, they will not survive. . . . I hope they do survive, because there’s a lot that’s really beautiful about Catholicism. Even though there are those of us who are fighting it like you would fight an abusive parent, you love the parent still and you want it to be healed.

What about the abuse victims?

He [the pope] says his concern is “to bring healing to the victims.” But he’s denying them the one thing which might actually bring them healing, which is a full confession from the Vatican. . . .

You’re talking about some very broken people. . . . Life is very difficult for them. They can’t hold down jobs, can’t hold down relationships. . . . Life is difficult. Therapy costs a lot of money. These people don’t make much money; hardly any of them are actually fit to work. They need the Vatican to cough up some of its billions [to] pay for these people to be able to live their lives.

Should Irish bishops resign, as a few have offered?

Resignation gets them off the hook. They should be criminally prosecuted. . . . If you or I covered up crimes like that, we’d be slap-bang in jail in five minutes, and rightly so. There’s a double standard. . .

What should the Irish people do?

It’s the good-hearted, sweet Catholic people who go to Mass still despite all of this — they are the people who have the power in their hands to get the Vatican on its knees and confess. . . . How these people can do that is by refusing to go to Mass, boycott them until they actually come to their knees and confess. . . .

The way we are at the moment, we’re in a very dysfunctional relationship with an organization that’s actually abusing us. And we can’t see what’s being done to us. We have the mentality of a battered wife who thinks it’s her fault. If we had a friend in a similar relationship, we would beg him or her to walk away.

Yet you still consider yourself a Catholic?

I’m a Catholic, and I love God. . . . That’s why I object to what these people are doing to the religion that I was born into. . . .

I’m passionately in love and always have been with what I call the Holy Spirit, which I believe the Catholic Church have held hostage and still do hold hostage. I think God needs to be rescued from them. They are not representing Christian values and Christian attitudes. If they were truly Christian, they would’ve confessed ages ago, and we wouldn’t be having to batter the door down and try to get blood from a stone.

via Sinead O’Connor: ‘There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope’ – latimes.com.

MW/PP: The situation in Germany is particularly of interest because for years, the pope—then known as Cardinal Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger—oversaw the Munich and Freising Archdiocese. News reports vary on how aware Ratzinger was of a particular priest who had repeatedly molested boys, and one of the pope’s deputies has since taken responsibility for the personnel mistakes that led to further abuse. Your thoughts?

WR: I don’t know of any archdiocese where the archbishop or the cardinal archbishop was not kept fully informed and in most cases was not heavily involved in decision-making involving any priest who was accused of abusing minors. In every diocese in the U.S.,  including those headed by cardinals, there was personal knowledge by the cardinal archbishop when news of abuse surfaced. It was true in Boston, it was true in L.A., it was true in Chicago.

The fact we have one archbishop in Munich that claims not to know anything is enough to make one suspicious. So the question is, if there was complicity by the pope himself, how do you get the evidence? And the evidence is in the recollections of priests who were involved who would know, the evidence is in the personnel files, and I’m not sure under German law whether there is any way whether civil authorities could force the release of those files. … One thing is certain. The church went to such great lengths to protect its bishops and archbishops in the U.S., you can imagine how far they’ll go to protect the reputation of the pope.

via Q&A: A Reporter’s Insight Into the International Clergy Abuse Flare-Up – ProPublica.