The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has gained an unexpected ally in its criticism of the Roman Catholic Church’s abuse of children: the prime minister of Ireland. Condemning the Catholic Church’s “frankly brazen disregard” for child protection, Enda Kenny, Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister), said: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.”
Kenny’s scathing rebuke of the Catholic Church was made in the Dáil (Irish parliament) yesterday, July 20, in response to the “Cloyne report” on the Holy See’s role in covering up cases of clerical child sex abuse. “It’s fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order” said Kenny. “Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”
IHEU was the first, and so far only, organization at the UN Human Rights Council to call the Holy See to account for its role in child abuse scandals around the world. Speaking to the Human Rights Council in 2009, IHEU represenative Keith Porteus Wood called for the Holy See to honour its obligations as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2011, following news from Cloyne and also from the US and elsewhere, IHEU made another statement at the UN Human Rights Council condemning the Holy See for “harbouring and trafficking paedophile priests.”
–Matt Cherry
The full statement by Prime Minister Kenny can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo5MXrqbDeA
The statements by IHEU Representative Keith Porteus Wood can be viewed at: http://www.iheu.org/iheu-calls-vatican-recognize-its-responsibilities-children-and-under-un-convention and at: http://www.iheu.org/iheu-again-calls-holy-see-account-un