FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND NEWS


Concerns over six-figure Murdoch gift to papal visit funds


Christopher Lamb


THE CHURCH is being advised to examine donations with greater care after its acceptance of a contribution from the Murdoch family towards the costs of the papal visit to Britain last September. James Murdoch, who is in charge of his


father Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Europe and Asia, is understood to have given a donation believed to be at least £100,000. On the day that Pope Benedict XVI cele-


brated Mass in Westminster Cathedral, Mr Murdoch, and other major donors to the visit’s funding, were introduced to the Pope in Archbishop’s House. However, after revelations about phone hacking at the News of the World and allega- tions of unethical journalistic practices at The Sunday Times and The Sun also owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, one bishop has said that the Church needs to look at whether it can accept money from the Murdoch organisation in the future. “We’ll have to be careful in the future about that particular source of money,” Bishop Kieran Conry of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton said. “A conversation needs to take place, discussion needs to take place. It is a


public scandal and everyone knows Murdoch’s empire is tainted by these revelations.” The bishop, who ran the Catholic Media


Office in the 1990s, stressed that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and all individual dioceses, had safeguards and a policy over accepting donations and that the full extent of the phone-hacking scan- dal was not known at the time of the donation. Francis Davis, a fund-raiser for various reli- gious causes, former government adviser and trustee of numerous charities, said: “Given the importance that the English bishops have attached to ethics in business since the bank- ing crisis, it would now be extraordinary if the bishops were not to review the ethical provenance of this donation. And perhaps it raises questions about other donations we don’t know about.” He added: “We need a published national


standard as to what constitutes ethical fund- raising in the Catholic context.” Mr Davis also said that the hierarchy should discuss whether it is appropriate to return the donation from the Murdochs. A spokesman for the bishops’ conference said the “donation was given and accepted in good faith at the time”. He added that the fund-raising committee of the Catholic Trust


James Murdoch meets the Pope in Archbishop’s House in 2010. Photo: L’Osservatore Romano


for England and Wales is responsible for dona- tions and their policy is that “appropriate due diligence research is undertaken to ensure that the Church does not knowingly accept any donations where there is a question of illegality or impropriety regarding the donor”. This week, the Church Commissioners told


the General Synod of the Church of England, which owns £3.8 million worth of shares in News Corporation, that they will not be with- drawing their investment. Rupert Murdoch, who is a papal knight but not a Catholic, donated $10 million in 1999 to help with the building of Los Angeles’ Catholic cathedral. (See Catherine Pepinster, page 11.)


New report catalogues child-protection failures in Cloyne


David Quinn THE LONG-awaited report commissioned in 2009 by the Irish Government into the handling of sex-abuse cases in the Diocese of Cloyne, Co. Cork, has found that its leaders routinely failed to implement the Church’s child protection procedures. The report investigated allegations of abuse against 19 priests, including the then Bishop John Magee, which were made to the diocese between 1996 and February 2009. It found that Bishop Magee took “little or no interest” in managing the cases, and that in only one case did the diocese respond correctly. It reveals that Bishop Magee incorrectly told the country’s Health Service Executive that all allegations of sex abuse were being reported to the Gardaí and describes the bishop’s “inertia” concerning child protection as “remarkable”. Bishop Magee, a former private secretary to three Popes, became Bishop of Cloyne in 1987 and resigned from his diocesan duties


in March 2009 following an investigation into child protection failures in Cloyne con- ducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland. The government-ordered investigation into


Cloyne published on Wednesday was led by Judge Yvonne Murphy and catalogues how Bishop Magee left the management of the child protection cases to his vicar general, Mgr Denis O’Callaghan, and how in almost every instance Mgr O’Callaghan did not follow the Church’s child-protection procedures properly. The report criticises the Vatican over its negative attitude to the Irish Church’s 1996 “framework document” on child protection. The Congregation for Clergy told the Irish bishops that aspects of the document appeared to be “contrary to canon law” and in particular expressed misgivings about the mandatory reporting requirement to the civil author- ities. According to the report, the apostolic nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, declined to help Judge Murphy’s


commission, saying he was “unable to assist”. The reports shows how, as the person in charge of responding to child protection alle- gations in Cloyne, Mgr O’Callaghan did not like the framework document. He believed it interfered with a “pastoral” approach and that it was too “rules-led”. The commission also investigated an alle- gation against Bishop Magee himself made by a candidate for the priesthood. It found the alleged incident did not amount to sexual abuse, but that it was “inappropriate” and raised “boundary” issues. The report details an emergency meeting


of the Irish bishops in January 2009 after the National Board’s investigation in Cloyne. Following the meeting, Cardinal Seán Brady met Bishop Magee and asked him to consider his position. A month or so later, Bishop Magee stepped down and the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Dr Dermot Clifford, took over as apostolic administrator. (For the full report, visit www.thetablet.co.uk.)


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