Former Irish Archbishop Tied to Sexual Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland -- "and the hits just keep on coming" - even from beyond the grave.

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Former Irish Archbishop Tied to Sexual Abuse

DUBLIN — The former Archbishop of Dublin, the late 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 unnamed cleric were reported to the Murphy Commission, a state-sponsored investigation into the handling of clerical sex abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese. The newspaper reported that Archbishop McQuaid, who died in 1973, is the unnamed 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 this 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 complaint alleges 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,” said Patsy McGarry, the newspaper’s religious affairs correspondent, 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 the man who had been at the very apex of the Catholic Church in Ireland for more than three decades.

In a statement, a victims’ group, One in Four, called for a statutory inquiry into the allegations 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 the matters dealt with in the supplementary report were now being investigated by the police. There is also a separate civil action being taken against the archdiocese by one complainant.

Although he never became a cardinal, it would be near impossible to overstate the authority Archbishop McQuaid wielded, even before his consecration as archbishop of Dublin in 1940 until his retirement in 1972. He was highly influential in framing the Irish constitution of 1937, which among other things recognized the “special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.” This was removed in 1973, the year of Archbishop McQuaid’s death.
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