Sickness

This is my latest cartoon from the current issue of Private Eye. The 3 decade long child abuse scandal in the Irish Catholic Church is a vile, vile tragedy. I personally do not think apologies and payouts are an adequate response to the way the Church covered up this abuse to protect it's reputation.

"It was reported that more than 300 children were sexually abused by priests between 1975 and 2004. However, church leaders did not report the cases to the police in order to avoid tarnishing the church's reputation and assets. " (presstv.ir)

This is on top of the scandal of the institutions run by The Catholic Brothers between 1940 and 1970 where "More than 3,100 people testified before the commission over the years and more than 800 priests, brothers, sisters and laypeople were implicated as abusers." (catholicnews.com) 25,000 children were in the care of these institutions during this period.

My cartoon is a bit of light humour directed at this scandal, but in a way, I hope it reveals something of the seeming nonchalance with which the Church and probably the Irish government accepted these abuses at the time they were occuring. Thanks to Private Eye for publishing it.