Pressure builds on head of Irish Church to resign
A BBC documentary broadcast on Tuesday said Cardinal Sean Brady was given, in 1975, the names and addresses of children being abused by paedophile Brendan Smyth during a Church investigation but had failed to act to ensure their safety.
"Considering the damage done by that awful man Brendan Smyth, considering the repercussions, one has to say that unfortunately the Cardinal has lost his moral credibility," Father Vincent Twomey, a respected retired professor of moral theology at Ireland's main seminary in the town of Maynooth, told national broadcaster RTE late on Thursday.
"There is a sense of a Greek tragedy in all of this. In the Greek tragedy, people do things intending to do the good thing but instead some awful, dreadful things happen as a result of their actions and they have to pay for it."
"I think for the good of the church, I'm afraid I am of the opinion that he should resign."
The Church in predominantly Catholic Ireland has been rocked by a series of reports of child sex abuse stretching back decades and of church leaders' complicity in covering them up. Similar scandals have come to light in the United States and in Europe, opening the Vatican to accusations it had tolerated a culture of silence over the problem.
Ireland announced last year it would close its embassy to the Vatican, one of the Catholic country's oldest missions, after relations hit an all-time low over the Church's handling of sex abuse cases.
Twomey was adding his voice to similar calls by groups representing victims of abuse and government ministers, led by deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore who called the revelations "another horrific episode of failure by senior members of the Catholic Church to protect children.
Brady, who last year agreed to a legal settlement over the administering of an oath of secrecy to a teenage victim during the 1975 investigation, said the documentary was seriously misleading and that he did not see it as a resigning matter.
In a statement, he said that the programme had exaggerated his role in the inquiry and that he was only a note-taker in the investigation and not the "designated person" responsible for reporting the matter to the civil authorities.
He had trusted his superiors to deal with the matter, he added, saying the Church did not fully understand the impact of the abuse at the time.
Brady would be the most senior Church figure to resign over the abuse scandals were he to step down. Two bishops stood aside in 2009 after a report said Church leaders had covered up widespread sexual abuse of children by priests for 30 years.
Two other bishops offered to quit following the publication of the report but their resignations were not accepted by the Vatican.
The controversy may also leave a cloud over Ireland's hosting of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress next month, a gathering that takes place every four years and attracts tens of thousands of Catholics from around the world.
Lawmakers said on Friday that Brady could help the Church move on by stepping down.
"Brady resigning would be a powerful force for healing and a great gesture for victims and his Church. He's not the problem but he can lead the solution," Aodhan O Riordain, a member of the junior government Labour party said on twitter.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin)