THE GUARDIAN: Rowan Williams's comments on Vatican handling of sex abuse scandal likely to further cloud pope's upcoming UK trip
The archbishop of Canterbury has said the Catholic church in Ireland has lost "all credibility" because of its poor handling of the scandal of paedophile priests.
Dr Rowan Williams said the scandal had been a "colossal trauma" for Ireland in particular.
In an interview to be broadcast on Monday, he said: "I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now.
"And an institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility – that's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland."
The archbishop's remarks are likely to fuel the controversy surrounding the pope's visit to Britain in September, when he is expected to talk about moral standards and renew his attack on Britain's equality laws.
A Protest the Pope petition on the Downing Street website against the £15m cost of the visit, which will be shared by the government and the Catholic church, has already attracted more than 10,000 signatories.
In his interview for BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, to be broadcast on Monday, Williams sounded less than enthused about the pope's visit.
"The pope will be coming here to Lambeth Palace. We'll have the bishops together to meet him. I'm concerned that he has the chance to say what he wants to say in and to British society, that we welcome him as a valued partner and, you know, that's ... that's about it."
He also predicted that few Anglicans would take up the pope's offer of conversion to Catholicism.
The reputation of the Catholic church in Ireland has been severley damaged by revelations that its leaders covered up widespread child sexual abuse by dozens of paedophile priests.
Its leader, the primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, came under pressure to stand down after he admitted being at a meeting where children abused by the convicted paedophile Father Brendan Smyth were forced to take a vow of silence.
The scandal has also damaged the pope, who has faced accusations that he failed to properly investigate a serial abuser in a children's home for the deaf in Wisconsin, US, in the late 1990s.
Yesterday, the Vatican provoked further controversy after the pope's personal preacher compared criticism of the Catholic hierarchy over cleric sex abuse with persecution of Jews. >>> David Batty | Saturday, April 03, 2010
