Secret Report: Irish Church on Verge of Collapse; Ireland's Priest Assoc. to Inform Pope of Plight

The Clerical Whispers website reports on February 16, 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI will be officially told that the Irish Catholic Church is "on the edge of a national collapse," and has only five to ten years to make a radical recovery by giving laymen and women a greater say in decision-making.

The warning will be submitted to the Pope in the next month or two in a confidential report by an international investigator examining the state of the Irish church, in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan reports into clerical child abuse.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, gave this commitment at a private meeting with members of the recently formed Catholic Priests' Association, Redemptorist priest Fr. Tony Flannery revealed this past weekend.

Fr. Flannery said Cardinal O'Malley told the association that the Irish Catholic Church had a decade -- at most -- to avoid falling over the edge and "becoming like other European countries" where religion is marginal to society.