The papal nuncio, the Pope's representative in Ireland, is being sued for damages by a Wexford man who claims to have been sexually abused by a priest. The legal action is understood to be the first attempt to make the church in Rome liable for alleged abuse by priests in Ireland.

Lawyers for Paul Molloy submitted a general endorsement of their claim to the High Court last week. The action is being taken against Luciano Storero, the nuncio, Brendan Comiskey, the bishop of Ferns, and Fr Scan Fortune, a Wexford priest.

Molloy is seeking damages for assault and personal injury. He claims that the nuncio and Comiskey were in breach of their duty by admitting Fortune to ordination and to a ministry in which he had power and dominion over children and unsupervised contact with them.

He is also seeking a declaration from the court that the nuncio and Comiskey, "having embarked on an inquiry into the "sexual assaults" by Fortune, had a duty to complete the inquiry or to notify him of their intention not to do so.

Molloy's endorsement of claim also seeks a declaration that Storero and Comiskey failed in their duty to inform his parents that there were reasonable grounds for assuming that he had been abused by Fortune.

Yesterday Monsignor Salvatore Pennacchio, the papal nuncio's counsellor, said:

"The Irish bishops have a deep pastoral concern for any person who may have been abused by a priest and the apostolic nuncio shares that concern. We would point out that the office of the nuncio does not include (a) role in the appointment of priests to parishes or in the supervision of their ministry"

Comiskey did not want to comment on the case. Fortune could not be contacted.

The bishop of Ferns has always rejected any suggestion that he covered up for priests accused of child sex abuse. At a press conference in 1996 he said: "I have never ever put a child's safety at risk to protect any priest." He also denied ever obstructing any garda, health board or other investigation of alleged child sex abuse.

In November 1995, Fortune, then aged 42, and a native of Gorey appeared at Wexford district court on 12 charges of gross indecency and 10 of indecent assault on six youths over a six-year period. The offences were alleged to have taken place in a number of locations in Co Wexford from December 1981 to a date unknown in 1987.

The alleged victims were aged between 12 and 16 at the time, the court was told. Fortune pleaded not guilty to each of the charges and was remanded on bail. The case is still before the courts.

The Hare Krishna movement has admitted that sexual, physical and emotional abuse was once prevalent at its boarding schools.

Its official journal gives details of the abuse of children in the care of Hare Krishna monks and young followers in the United States and in India during the 1970s and 1980s.

Parents were unaware of the abuse, often away soliciting support for the movement, the New York Times reported.

Ten former Krishna pupils first confronted movement leaders at a meeting in May 1996, saying they had been regularly beaten and caned at school, denied medical care and molested homosexually at knife point.

Less than six in ten Catholics in Northern Ireland now attend weekly mass, a shock survey is to reveal. The official investigation ordered by the Church disclosed a total of 57 percent of those surveyed attended Mass at least once a week during 1997/98. It is the lowest figure for attendance revealed so far by the surveys, which will eventually cover all of Ireland. But it is also expected to show a majority of Catholics have confidence in the priests in their parishes despite the recent scandals. The survey, the first of its kind, is set against a background of general decline in Church attendance although Catholics are expected to attend mass at least once a week. In 1974 it was discovered that 91 percent of Catholics attended Mass at least once a week.

Vancouver (dpa) - A former Roman Catholic bishop and Indian school principal, who was convicted of rape and indecent assault, apologised to his victims during a tribal ceremony in exchange for no further prosecution, local reports said.

Hubert O'Connor, 71, was convicted on charges involving sexual assaults against five young people when he worked in a school for Indians in the 1960s before becoming bishop of Prince George.

"I took a vow of chastity and I broke it," O'Connor, the highest Catholic official ever taken to court on sex crimes charges, said in a tribal "healing circle" in Alkali Lake, British Columbia, the Vancouver Sun reported.

"I want to apologise for my breach as a priest" O'Connor told a 51-year-old woman who was 18 when he allegedly raped her. The woman, one of five of O'Connor's alleged victims, had been an employee at the St. Joseph's school during O'Connor's tenure there.

She stated that after two trials and several appeals she was tired of "being victimised by the courts" and now is willing to put her trust in the traditional healing circle. The prosecutors accepted her decision.

O'Connor spent six months in jail. Last March his 1996 conviction was overturned by the province's Court of Appeal, which acquitted the former bishop of the indecent assault conviction and ordered a new trial for the rape charge.

The Christian Brothers offered its "deepest apologies" after a school principal was convicted of more than 50 sex offences against young boys in his care.

Victims of 50-year-old, Patrick John Kelly, a member of the Christian Brothers, wept in the public gallery of Dublin district criminal court as he pleaded guilty to 53 charges against 11 children.

The court heard that Kelly committed the offences on boys aged between seven and fourteen years in Counties Waterford, Wicklow, Kildare and Tipperary as well as Dublin and Cork between 1977 and 1988.

Some of the offences - 51 of indecent assault and two of gross indecency - were committed in schools, others at private addresses, said prosecution lawyer, Mary Ellen Ring.

Kelly was remanded in custody for sentencing on December 15 when victim impact reports would be presented to the court.

In a statement of apology to Kelly's victims, the Christian Brothers said they were "deeply saddened" by his actions.

The Pope has declared Christianity's 2,000th anniversary a "year of mercy". And he has issued new decrees offering the faithful opportunity for forgiveness - and he says the church will seek forgiveness as well.

Pope John Paul's papal Bull, to be issued tomorrow, upholds a 700-year-old tradition of celebrating church anniversary years by offering "indulgences" - acts of penance through which the faithful can win forgiveness of sins.

For individuals, John Paul says, the penance can be as simple as giving up smoking for a day.

Expanding the tradition, the pope is also inviting such acts of atonement by nations, in the form of forgiving Third World debt, and by the church and its clerics.

'As a successor of Peter, I ask that in this year of mercy the church, strong in the holiness that she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters," John Paul writes.

Papal Bulls are edicts of the popes. John Paul wants the church to enter the third millennium with a clear conscience.

Jewish groups and others have urged a specific recounting of church wrongs.

After calling for "humble recognition of our faults" by Catholics, John Paul's edict pointedly adds, "At the same time, there will be no lack of fair-minded people able to recognise that past and present history also records incidents of exclusion, injustice and persecution directed against the sons and daughters of the church."

Jubilee indulgences are a tradition going back to Pope Boniface VIII, who marked 1300 AD by offering "abundant remission and pardon of sins" to those who made pilgrimages to St Peter's Basilica that year.

Strapped for cash, the medieval church increasingly resorted to taking money for indulgences - Martin Luther's top complaints among the famous 95 theses he nailed to a church door in Germany in 1517.

Excommunicated for his dissent, Luther was instrumental in the establishment of Protestantism.

 Pervert priest Daniel Curran - dubbed "The Devil's Disciple" - could return to the ministry, Sunday Life can reveal.

For, incredibly, the sick paedophile may be allowed to remain in the priesthood ... in spite of carrying out a horrifying litany of sex attacks on young boys.

Sunday Life revealed that the shamed cleric had slipped unnoticed from jail, without his tormented victims being told.

Evil Curran, 47, was freed three weeks ago after serving just half of a seven-year sentence.

He was caged in May 1995 for a catalogue of indecent assaults against nine boys, aged 11 to 13.

According to church sources, Curran's future has yet to be decided.

But, unbelievably, one option being considered is assigning him a limited ministry, where any contact with children would be strictly supervised.

Other alternatives include forcing Curran to retire or withdrawing his clerical status.

A Catholic Church spokesman told Sunday Life:

"The protection and welfare of children must always be the paramount and overriding consideration in arriving at any decision."

Alcoholic Curran, who was attached to St Paul's Parish on Belfast's Falls Road, lured boys to his family's isolated holiday home near Downpatrick. Once there, he plied his helpless victims with drink before assaulting them.

But even the possibility that Curran could return to the ministry has outraged the boys' parents.

One told Sunday Life:

"Since Curran's release, my son has talked about running away - he's terrified of meeting him again. It seems incredible that the church could show any tolerance to a man who used his position to hurt and abuse innocent youngsters. He should have been defrocked a long time ago."

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - The older nuns at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, which stands like an ancient fortress on a tough street here, remember the 1940s, when 1,200 Irish children packed the classrooms of the adjacent elementary school.

In those days, every teacher was a nun in black habit. The young women entered the order after high school and said their final vows in groups of 30, 40 - even 50 or more.

On a recent Sunday, in the church's cool, high-ceilinged sanctuary, two dozen elementary school students, all of them African-American, swayed, clapped and sang a Gaelic Comrnunion song in honour of their sixth-grade teacher, Noreen Holly, as she defied modern society and took her final vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.

Holly, 37, will be the only woman this year to make the final commitment to the Sisters of Charity of St Elizabeth, New Jersey's largest female Catholic religious community.

As the number of women joining Catholic religious communities has fallen to a trickle, nuns in the United States have greyed considerably. Sister Noreen will join a select 3 percent under age 40. The average for an American nun teeters around 70.

The free fall in the population of religious women - a steady drop from a peak of nearly 180,000 in 1965 to 85,412 this year - has made it easier to talk with nuns about issues like sex.

According to them, God always answers Mary's petitions. No wonder she is more important than Jesus in Roman Catholicism!!

The explanation is given to us in a piece of twentieth century Catholic literature. The bishop advises taking a knife or if necessary your finger (most people don't carry knives to Mass, we guess) and taking 'Him' out of your plate, then popping 'Him' in water and drinking 'Him'. We will leave it to your imagination as to the procedure adopted if the person had been sick!

THE HUNCHBACK OF ST PETER'S SQUARE

The hunchback of St. Peter’s Square has descended on America yet again. Pope John Paul II, prophet of the gospel of humanism and purveyor of the politics of racial resentment - like his pal Robert Mugabe who oversees the murders of Rhodesia’s white farmers - presumes to wave his papal finger at America’s sins of "national character."

Hearkening to 1857 and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, the pope, while visiting St. Louis, admonished us concerning those dark days when "people of African descent" were placed "outside the boundaries of national community and the Constitution’s protection." 

So this alleged upholder of Western values, this "conservative" who is supposed to represent Western Civilisation, this Great White Father of the Vatican, spreads the gospel of Marxist race war, of Hate Whitey and Blame Whitey.

John Paul seems to have forgotten that Justice Taney was a Roman Catholic in good standing, that the Dred Scott decision was a legacy of 2,500 years of classical western jurisprudence concerning slaves(a large share of whom from antiquity to British America, were white)and that Pope Pius IX, whose shoes the current Polish Pontiff is not fit to shine, sympathised with the Confederacy during the War Between the States.

It was no crime for the strict constructionist Taney to fail to break ranks with millennia of western legal tradition, or to argue, correctly, that the Constitutional definition of a citizen did not include Africans, since the Founders had not endeavoured to concoct an oxymoron and make citizens of slaves. Taney’s "sin" consists in the fact that he would not betray the Constitution as the Founders had written it.

Moreover, his decision owed at least as much to the fact of servitude as to race. Enslaved whites had also been denied citizenship in the early days of the Republic. America’s initial immigration laws specified that only free whites were eligible for citizenship. On Jan. 29, 1795 Congress legislated that, "Any alien being a free white person may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States..."

Of course the fact that legions of poor whites in colonial America had endured chattel slavery, back-breaking toil and grinding poverty demolishes the myth of "white skin privilege" and the pope, being a mythomaniac of the deepest dye, will not countenance a word of it.

How easy it is for John Paul, in league with his Communist cronies Castro and Mugabe, to act the part of a politically correct Jeremiah and make white people the focus of hatred and resentment. But where was our media superstar’s finger of admonition when he was in the presence of rabbis and Zionists?

When did he say, on the numerous occasions, when he shared the spotlight of the world media with Jewish leaders, that "people of Gentile descent" have been placed "outside the boundaries of national community and the protection of the law" by the judicial rulings of the Mishnah and Gemara, and of "the great sages" Moses Maimonides and Shneur Zalman?

When did John Paul confront the chief rabbi and Jewish congregations when he met them in Rome, with the Talmud’s ruling that only Jewish persons are human, and with the bloody consequences of that ruling for the peasants of Russia and Eastern Europe under the Jewish-Bolshevik regime, and for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation? 

Eleven years before Justice Taney wrote his landmark decision for the U.S. Supreme Court, two shepherd children atop a mountain in France had a daunting vision of a weeping lady. The ethereal Cassandra supposedly prophesied that "Rome would become the seat of the Anti-Christ."

Smile as you will at the juvenilia embodied in what has come to be known as the "Lady of LaSalette," but considering the present pontificate of the malevolent hunchback, the children's tale of the message of the mysterious oracle would seem to be hauntingly prescient.

Michael A. Hoffman II