Contact: Jessica Lillie, PR Director, votfpr@votf.org, (781) 559-3360, (314) 749-5188 cell
For Immediate Release
December 17, 2009– Boston –The resignation of Bishop Donal Murray in Ireland is one of the few times a bishop has stepped down after failing to protect children from sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. We believe that such accountability is required of any bishops, in Ireland and elsewhere, who have failed in their responsibilities as pastors and leaders of our Church.
The fact that so few bishops have taken similar steps, despite ample evidence that dozens more are guilty of the same failures, underscores the moral blindness of far too many of our Catholic hierarchy. It is long since time for the Vatican to step in and hold these miscreant bishops throughout the world accountable for their failure to protect children.
“It should by now have occurred to the leadership in the Vatican that there are disastrous flaws in the criteria and process by which Catholic bishops are selected” said Daniel G. Bartley, President of Voice of the Faithful. “Such flaws arise out of the monarchical clerical culture of aloofness, secrecy, insularity and unaccountable authoritarianism which permeates our hierarchy. This unhealthy culture originates in Rome but has spread globally.”