Pope Benedict XVI has summoned the Irish bishops to Rome to discuss Ireland’s clerical abuse scandal.
The bishops will meet the Pope on February 15 and 16, The Irish Catholic newspaper reports this morning.
The Pope last met with Cardinal Se?n Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on December 11, with several senior Vatican officials in attendance.
Four bishops have resigned since the publication in November last year of a damning report by Judge Yvonne Murphy on the Dublin archdiocese — one of Europe’s largest.
It concluded that the Church hierarchy in Ireland concealed abuse of hundreds of children by paedophile priests for three decades.
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It is expected that proposals on dealing with the fallout from the abuse scandal will be put forward, with conclusions offered by the pontiff.
The bishops will return to their dioceses for the Ash Wednesday liturgies on February 17.
Draft versions of a pastoral letter written by the Pope to the Irish faithful have begun to circulate in the Holy See, Vatican insiders have reported.
The Murphy report dealt with how the Dublin archdiocese handled complaints of sexual abuse of children by priests. It said that the archdiocese had had an “obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal” and had “little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child”.