High crimes

Religion | Sex abuse scandal rocks Catholics in Europe | Timothy Lamer

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The Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal has dropped from the front pages in the United States, but new evidence of widespread wrongdoing in Europe is shaking up that continent. The scandal in Europe, as it did in the United States, has two elements—the sexual molestation of minors by priests, and the cover-up of that crime by higher church authorities.

• In Ireland, where thousands claim abuse, the scandal has engulfed Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Irish church. Brady admits that in 1975 he took part as a canon lawyer in a secret church hearing about priest Brendan Smyth. At the hearing church authorities told a boy and a girl who had been molested by Smyth, who died in prison 22 years later, to take oaths of silence with regard to the abuse. Pope Benedict sent a letter of apology to Ireland's Catholics about the rampant abuse, but did not suggest that Brady should step down.