Archbishop blasts Irish orders over abuse

DUBLIN (AP) — Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin slammed Irish Catholic orders Monday for concealing their culpability in decades of child abuse and said they needed to come up with much more money to compensate victims.

The comments from Archbishop Martin, a veteran Vatican diplomat, were the harshest yet by a Roman Catholic leader after last week’s report detailing widespread abuse in scores of church-run industrial schools from the 1930s to 1990s.

The archbishop said the nuns and Catholic brothers who ran the workhouses must drop their refusal to renegotiate an intensely criticized a 2002 agreement with the Irish government over compensation for victims. The orders offered to pay only $175 million to the government to be protected from victims’ civil lawsuits, while taxpayers are picking up a much larger bill to compensate more than 14,000 victims of physical, sexual and mental abuse.