2 more Irish bishops resign over report

DUBLIN (AP) — Two Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland resigned Christmas Day in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

Dublin Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field offered an apology to child-abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass.

Priests read the statement to worshippers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland’s 4 million Catholics.

Earlier this month, two other bishops, Donal Murray of Limerick and Jim Moriarty of Kildare, quit after the Nov. 26 publication of a three-year investigation into why so many abusive Dublin priests escaped justice for so long.

The government-ordered investigation found that Dublin church leaders spent decades shielding more than 170 pedophile priests from the law.

They began providing information to police only in 1995 — but continued to keep secret, until 2004, many files and other records of reported abuse.

In a joint statement, Walsh and Field said they hoped their resignations “may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims [and] survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologize to them.”

The Dublin archdiocese has faced a rising tide of civil lawsuits from abuse victims since the mid-1990s, after one abuse victim, former altar boy Andrew Madden, went public with the church’s effort to buy his silence and protect a serving priest.

The archdiocese estimates its ultimate bill for settlements and legal costs may top $30 million.