TV News LIES

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland resisted calls for his resignation yesterday, despite admitting that he took part in meetings where the victims of a paedophile priest were forced to take a vow of silence.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, has confirmed he was present at a closed canonical tribunal in 1975 when two child victims of Father Brendan Smyth were ordered to sign agreements under oath that they would not discuss what happened to them with anybody other than an approved priest.

There were immediate calls for Cardinal Brady’s resignation. Colm O’Gorman, head of Amnesty Ireland and founder of One in Four, a charity helping victims of sexual abuse, said that the Cardinal’s position was now impossible.

More...

Ireland's most senior Catholic cleric tonight faced down calls to resign after revealing that he was at a secret tribunal where sex abuse victims were made to take an oath of silence.

Cardinal Sean Brady said that he had attended two meetings in 1975 concerning Father Brendan Smyth, a notorious paedophile, where two of Smyth's victims signed an affidavit promising to discuss their claims only with a specified priest.

Europe's Catholic paedophile scandal now affects institutions in Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany.

Cardinal Schoenborn later clarified his comments saying it would be wrong to say that celibacy was a prime cause of sexual abuse.

"If celibacy is the problem, then without celibacy there should be no sexual abuse but unfortunately this is not the case. We know about cases inside the family," he said.

The Archbishop of Vienna today said priestly celibacy could be one of the causes of the sex abuse scandals to hit the Catholic church. In an article for Thema Kirche, his diocesan magazine, Christoph Schonborn became the most senior figure in the Catholic hierarchy to make the connection between the two and called for an "unflinching examination" of the possible reasons for paedophilia.

He wrote: "These include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution. "It also includes the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the church and of society as a whole."

Schonborn is not the first person to suggest a link between celibacy and paedophilia – the theologian Hans Kung has made the same assertion. A spokesman clarified the archbishop's words, insisting he was "in no way" seeking to question the celibacy rule or call for its abolition.

More...

A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.

A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.