Call made to investigate former priest’s abuses

One of the highest-ranking members of the Catholic Church in Ireland over the weekend called for a renewed, global investigation of the church’s role in the scandal of a late priest blamed for sexually abusing dozens of children, including some while he served in eastern North Dakota 30 years ago.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin on Sunday called for an independent commission to fully examine all accusations against Brendan Smyth, who died in 1997 in prison, serving a 12-year sentence for abusing more than 20 children.

The scandal over how church and state officials covered up his crimes brought down the Labor government of the Republic of Ireland in the early 1990s.

Sunday’s comments by Martin filled newspapers across Ireland with renewed calls for a full accounting of sexual abuse decades ago in a country where nearly nine out of 10 are Catholic.

Smyth served as a visiting priest in Langdon, N.D., as well as for short interims in Park River and Ellendale, from 1979 to 1983; he went by the name of John Smyth here.

Reports of sexual misconduct with a half-dozen children in North Dakota surfaced after the scandal broke in Ireland in the early 1990s, church officials said. Most of them were not serious and the children, grown, did not ask for any settlement or counseling, officials of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo said.

But one Grand Forks man came forward in the mid-1990s, saying Smyth had sexually assaulted him over a period of several months when he was about 12 in Langdon in about 1981. The Fargo diocese paid for the man to receive counseling.

One Irish church official has told newspapers in Ireland that church officials kept moving

Smyth from parish to parish, partly to keep him from building relationships with families and children.

Stephen Lee is a reporter

at the Grand Forks Herald, which is owned by Forum Communications Co.

Tags: news, crime, abuse, religion