BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Pope Benedict XVI has rejected the resignations of two Irish bishops who came under pressure to step down in the wake of a damning report on clerical sex abuse, Irish media reports said Wednesday.
Auxiliary bishops Raymond Field and Eamonn Walsh tendered their resignations in December after a government- backed investigation found evidence of widespread coverups involving cases of priestly abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese from the ’70s through the ’90s.
But in a letter seen by Irish news outlets, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin informed fellow clerics the Vatican had decided not to accept the two bishops’ offers to step down. Instead, the pair will be “assigned revised responsibilities within the diocese,” the letter said, without specifying what those new duties would be.
The Vatican’s decision was swiftly denounced by victims’ groups as further proof the church is more interested in protecting its own than atoning for past sins.
