Last month saw the publication of the final tranche of reports from the first phase of reviews by the Irish Church’s safeguarding board, and the overall picture, according to board head Teresa Devlin, is one of steady progress.

“‘You really need to look at the detail of the reports to see that some orders took a while to get the culture of safeguarding embedded,’ she explains, continuing, ‘the Church has had guidance in place since 1996 and the first set of National Board standards were in 2008, and it probably wasn’t until 2012 that some of them started to put proper standards around their practices and report sharply to the Guards and the HSE. Others of course hit the ground running much longer before that’ …

“An important factor in things being handled so well and so swiftly, she adds, is the decline of a culture of deference both towards and between clergy. (Emphasis added)

“‘From my perspective this is good that that’s gone or going – it’s still around in some places – but it’s definitely good because priests are human beings like the rest of us, and they feel and they have to be challenged,’ she says.”

 

By Greg Daly, The Irish Catholic — Click here to read the rest of this story.