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The embattled Irish Catholic primate, Seán Brady, has faced further calls for his resignation from Ireland's foreign minister and the editor of the influential Irish Catholic newspaper over a child abuse row.
Cardinal Brady is resisting demands that he step down after allegations in a television programme this week that he failed to inform parents and police about a list of children who were being sexually abused by one of Ireland's most notorious paedophile priests.
The leader of Ireland's Catholics has refused to accept he should resign his position despite the scandal over a 1975 deal between a young boy abused by Father Brendan Smyth and the church which ensured the young victim's silence for decades. The BBC investigation alleged that the victim gave Brady, who was a note-taker at the meeting where the deal was made, a list of names and addresses of children he said Smyth was abusing. However, according to the BBC programme, Brady, who was then a priest, did not inform the children's parents or the police.
Eamon Gilmore, who is Ireland's deputy prime minister as well as the foreign minister, intensified the pressure on Brady to resign, joining Garry O'Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic as well as Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, in calling for him to step down.
"I've always believed in the separation of church and state," Gilmore said. "I think it is the job of government and of the state to enact our laws and to ensure that those laws apply to everybody whether they belong to a church or not.
"But it is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority."
While the Irish Catholic often defends the church from liberal and secular opponents, O'Sullivan, writing in Dublin's Evening Herald newspaper, accused Brady of demonstrating no "emotion of human sentiment for victims" on RTE television on Wednesday evening, when the Catholic primate insisted he would not step down.
O'Sullivan said it was better for the Catholic church's future recovery that he now resign and "hand in his hat", a significant intervention which will increase the pressure both in Ireland and Rome.
McGuinness said: "Ultimately, Cardinal Brady's response is a matter for himself and the church, but it is a very grave situation for survivors of abuse, for the Catholic church and for Catholics across Ireland.
"Speaking personally, I believe he should reflect on the wisdom of this position which will leave many Catholics wondering whether anything is to be done by the leadership of the Catholic church to ring the changes which many believe are required at such a sad time for all."
In a statement released in response to the allegations on the BBC programme, Brady said the programme makers had overstated the part he played. "It is my view that the This World programme has set out to deliberately exaggerate and misrepresent my role in these events.
"In the course of the programme a number of claims were made which overstate and seriously misrepresent my role in a Church Inquiry in 1975 into allegations against the Norbertine priest Fr Brendan Smyth.
"The commentary in the programme and much of the coverage of my role in this inquiry gives the impression that I was the only person who knew of the allegations against Brendan Smyth at that time and that because of the office I hold in the church today I somehow had the power to stop Brendan Smyth in 1975."
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