DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish police have begun assembling a specialist team to investigate allegations of clerical paedophilia, as controversy rages over the Dublin cardinal's handling of the growing scandal.
Such has been the furore in Ireland over rampant abuse of children by priests that the country's top policeman has been put in the charge of the inquiry.
Cardinal Desmond Connell has expressed the Roman Catholic church's "utter abhorrence of the evil which has been perpetrated."
But victims of clerical abuse were enraged when he released a statement on Wednesday saying he would co-operate with an inquiry but supported a church-backed investigation already under way.
"He should be arrested, without a shadow of a doubt," said John Kelly, himself a victim of clerical sex abuse and founder of the Survivors of Child Abuse group.
Anger over child sex abuse by priests that went virtually unchecked for decades has risen to fever pitch after a television documentary said at least six bishops in Dublin were aware of eight abusive priests and did nothing about them.
Connell, 76, who has been Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin since 1988 and was elevated to cardinal last year, has denied he knew anything about the cases which date back to 1974.
But he was recently heckled during a Dublin church service and calls for his resignation have grown, with newspapers, radio and television full of callers and abuse victims expressing anger at the church's stance.
"If Cardinal Connell were in any other job he would have been sacked by now," said one letter writer to the influential Irish Times. "At this stage he has no choice but to resign as most of his flock have lost faith and trust in him as a leader."
WORLD-WIDE CASES
The Catholic church has found itself in deep water this year amid a rash of clerical abuse cases world-wide, and the Vatican itself has come under severe pressure to act. In the United States alone, compensation claims by victims are running into billions of dollars.
The church in Ireland has been hugely damaged in recent months by revelations of the scale of child abuse by priests.
In April, the Bishop of Ferns, Brendan Comiskey, was forced to resign his office in his southern Irish diocese after a television documentary made clear he had long known of the activities of a paedophile priest, Father Sean Fortune.
In a statement released late on Wednesday, Connell said the diocese would co-operate with any inquiry set up by the appropriate authorities.
But he reiterated his support for an internal church inquiry set up months ago and headed by former judge Gillian Hussey.
"We remain convinced that Judge Hussey's Commission...is fully equipped to carry out such a task," he said.
Earlier, Justice Minister Michael McDowell had announced the government was on the verge of setting up its own inquiry and said church canon law had about as much authority as the rules of a sporting club.
"To me the issue is very, very clear. In this state the law enacted by the people is the law which is supreme," he told state-run RTE television.
The new police team announced by McDowell is headed by Ireland's top criminal investigator, Detective Chief Superintendent Sean Camon.