Friday, November 27, 2009 DUBLIN: Ireland's Catholic Church apologised Thursday after a damning new report showed it covered up child sex abuse over more than three decades.The Irish government also said sorry for failing to protect children in the wake of the latest report, published six months after a first landmark study revealed widespread abuse of children in Catholic care."I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened," said Diarmuid Martin, archbishop of Dublin since 2004."I am aware that no words of apology will ever be sufficient," he said, adding, "The fact that many abusers were priests constituted both an offence to God and an affront to the priesthood."The country's most senior Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, echoed the comments, saying, "I want to apologise to all those who have been hurt and their families."Following a three-year investigation in the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest, the report concluded that four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to inform police of the allegations.One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another confessed that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years."The volume of revelations of child sexual abuse by clergy over the past 35 years or so has been described by a Church source as a 'tsunami' of sexual abuse," said the report.The Irish government also immediately apologised.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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