Clerical Child Sex Abuse Inquiry
In December 2008, Bishop Magee found himself at the centre of a controversy concerning his handling of child sex abuse cases by clergy in the diocese of Cloyne. There were calls for his resignation, and on 7 March 2009 he announced that at his request the Pope had placed the running of the diocese in the hands of Dermot Clifford, metropolitan archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, to whose ecclesiastical province the diocese of Cloyne belongs. Magee remained Bishop of Cloyne, but withdrew from its administration in order, he said, to dedicate his full time to the matter of the inquiry. On 24 March 2010 it was announced by the Holy See that Bishop Magee had formally resigned from his duties as Bishop of Cloyne and was now bishop emeritus.
The subsequent report of the Irish government judicial inquiry, The Cloyne Report, published on 13 July 2011, found that former Bishop Magee had falsely told the Government and the HSE in a previous inquiry that the diocese was reporting all allegations of clerical child sexual abuse to the civil authorities. He gave his second-in-command Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, who admits he was more concerned with the plight of abusive priests than victims, a free hand to defy an edict to report all accusations.
Both Bishop Magee and the Monsignor, the vicar general in Cloyne, refused to co-operate with a Garda inquiry into abuse in 2006.
The inquiry into Cloyne — the fourth examination of clerical abuse in the Church in Ireland — found the greatest flaw in the diocese was repeated failure to report all complaints. It found nine allegations out of 15 were not passed on to the Garda.
Read more about this topic: John Magee (bishop)
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