FORMER Catholic primate Cardinal Sean Brady has expressed his "great sadness" over his role in an internal Church inquiry into paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
In 1975, Cardinal Brady, then Fr Brady, was present at interviews with two boys who had been abused by Smyth. The boys were bound to an oath of secrecy and were not allowed to tell even their parents.
One of the boys, Brendan Boland from Dundalk, Co Louth, told a BBC documentary in 2012 that he was interviewed at a Dundalk monastery in 1975 while his father had to wait outside the room.
In a new book, The Best Catholics In The World, Cardinal Brady told author Derek Scally he has only started to realise the enormity of what happened to Mr Boland.
"Hauled into a room with three fellows there, his father wasn't there, it was horrendous, really," he said.
"That is only dawning on me now, really... his double victimisation."
Cardinal Brady, who stood down as Primate of All Ireland in 2014, told Mr Scally he remembered little about his meeting with Mr Boland and said that the secrecy was concerned with protecting the Church's reputation.
Cardinal Brady said on reflection the interview failed in four areas: "Taking a legal approach intimidating to Brendan; separating him from his father; putting to him questions 'not respectful of the boy's dignity'; and shrouding proceedings in secrecy."
According to the author, the cardinal insisted "there was no legal obligation to do any more than he did then".
However, Cardinal Brady suggested he did not fully understand Mr Boland's suffering.
"It didn't sink in how heinous it was, how premeditated. It wasn't treated in any of the textbooks except 'the worst sin of all'... [there were] no details of what effect it was having on children," he said.
"There's a sadness, I suppose, a great sadness, a pain about the situation about Brendan Boland, that we weren't more enlightened at the time, that it didn't occur to me to go to the police or suggest someone else go to the police."
