Irish Church Sex Abuse Report Spurs Resignation

A group of four senior clerics are being pressured to resign following the dismissal of an Irish bishop over implications with a child sex abuse case.

Bishop Donal Murray was forced to hand-in his resignation after his handling of the abuse case had been deemed ‘inexcusable’.

The sixty-nine-year-old Irish Bishop is the first senior cleric in the country to resign since last month’s publication of the sex abuse report.

It emerged recently that through the course of 3 decades, widespread sexual abuse involving priests and minors had been covered up by leaders of the Irish Roman Catholic church.

Bishop Donal Murray was exposed as not having properly handled the allegations targeting an abusive cleric. Investigators even called his behaviour pertaining to one case as “inexcusable”.

Murray apoligised to members of his church during mass at Limerick’s St John’s Cathedral, saying that he felt sorry for all those who had been sexually abused as children.

Once the Vatican had confirmed the bishop’s resignation, surviving sex abuse victims demanded the immediate resignation of every bishop active since 1974 onwards at the Dublin Archdiocese.

These would include Eamonn Walsh, Jim Moriarty, Martin Drennan and Ray Field.

These senior clerics allegedly played a role with the investigation of the forty-six-priest investigated sample.

Support group One In Four executive director Maeve Lewis said Bishop Murray was amongst several auxiliary bishops based at the Dublin Archdiocese who were aware of serial sex abusers within the clergy community and who never acted upon his knowledge, thus ensuring that other kids went through the same kind of ordeal.