The Most Reverend Bishop Philip Boyce OCD | |
|---|---|
| Bishop Emeritus of Raphoe | |
| Church | Catholic Church |
| See | Raphoe |
| Installed | 1 October 1995 |
| Term ended | 9 June 2017 |
| Predecessor | Séamus Hegarty |
| Successor | Alan McGuckian |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 January 1940 |
| Coat of arms |  |
Philip Boyce, OCD (born 25 January 1940), was Bishop of Raphoe from 1 October 1995 until 2017. [1]
Boyce was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Downings, a village on the Rosguill Peninsula in the north of County Donegal. He was educated at Derryhassen School in Meevagh Parish and at Castlemartyr College in Castlemartyr, County Cork. He joined the noviciate of the Discalced Carmelites in Loughrea, County Galway, making his first profession in 1959. Having completed philosophical studies in Dublin, he studied theology at the Teresianum in Rome; he was ordained priest on 17 April 1966. He received a doctorate in theology (D.D.) in 1977 with a dissertation on the spirituality of John Henry Cardinal Newman.
During his twenty years on the teaching staff of the Pontifical Theological Faculty of the Carmelites in Rome, Boyce taught spirituality and dogmatic theology, and for many years was engaged in the work of formation of students preparing for the priesthood or doing postgraduate studies.
Boyce was appointed Bishop of Raphoe on 29 June 1995, and consecrated on 1 October 1995. The principal consecrator was Jorge María Cardinal Mejía. Both Emanuele Gerada, Titular Archbishop of Nomentum, the apostolic nuncio to Ireland at the time, and Séamus Hegarty, Bishop of Derry (and formerly Bishop of Raphoe), served as principal co-consecrators. [2]
In May 1999, Pope John Paul II appointed Boyce a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. As part of his work on the congregation, Boyce was also a member of the Vox Clara commission which, since its establishment by the Congregation on 19 July 2001, provided advice to the Holy See concerning English-language translations of liturgical books.
In August 2011, after the release of the report on the sexual abuse scandal in Cloyne diocese, Bishop Boyce said that the Church was experiencing a testing time, having been rocked by a "secular and godless culture" on the outside and the "sins and crimes of priests" within. Boyce, who promised to publish a report into clerical abuse in his diocese, urged Catholics not to lose confidence in their faith and to act with hope and patience during the current difficult times for the church. He added that "The moment of history we live through in Ireland at present is certainly a testing one for the church and for all of us,” he said. "Attacked from the outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture, rocked from the inside by the sins and crimes of priests and consecrated people, we all feel the temptation to lose confidence." [3]
On 25 January 2015, Bishop Boyce reached the mandatory age of retirement for a bishop which is 75 years. In a statement released by the Raphoe Diocese, Bishop Boyce duly submitted his resignation to Pope Francis. The Pope accepted his resignation, but asked him to continue until the current bishop, Alan McGuckian, was appointed.
A review, published on 30 November 2011, by the National Board for Safeguarding Children into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the Diocese of Raphoe concluded that "significant errors of judgment" were made by successive bishops in responding to the allegations. Boyce said he fully accepted the recommendations contained in the review, which was undertaken by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church. In a statement, he admitted that during the past decades there had been "very poor judgments and mistakes made ... There were horrific acts of abuse of children by individual priests, that should never have happened, and if suspected should have been dealt with immediately in the appropriate manner," he said.
Boyce said he was "truly sorry for the terrible deeds that have been inflicted on so many by a small minority of priests. "We offer our humble apologies once more and seek their forgiveness for the dreadful harm that has been done to them, their families and friends."
Three heads of Raphoe diocese, including Boyce, were criticised for their handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the report on child protection practices, which was published this morning. Former Bishop Séamus Hegarty, and his predecessor, Bishop Anthony McFeely, also came under fire for their response to accusations of clerical child sex abuse. The Raphoe review said that in dealing with allegations, too much emphasis was placed on the situation of the accused priest and too little on the needs of their complainants. "Judgements were clouded, due to the presenting problem being for example, alcohol abuse and an inability to hear the concerns about abuse of children, through that presenting problem," it said. "More attention should have been given to ensuring that preventative actions were taken quickly when concerns came to light," the report added. [4]
On 26 March 2018, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Philip Boyce as Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Dromore, after the resignation of Bishop John McAreavey in the wake of controversy over the latter's dealings with the paedophile priest Malachy Finegan. [5] [6] [7] On 15 April 2019, Pope Francis appointed Eamon Martin, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh, as Apostolic Administrator of Dromore, replacing Bishop Boyce.
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John Magee SPS is a Roman Catholic bishop emeritus in Ireland. He was Bishop of Cloyne from 1987 to 2010; following scandal he resigned from that position on 24 March 2010, becoming a bishop emeritus. Magee is the only person to have been private secretary to three popes.
Dónal McKeown is a Roman Catholic prelate from Northern Ireland who has served as Bishop of Derry since 2014.
Séamus Hegarty, D.D. was an Irish Catholic prelate. He served as Bishop of Raphoe from 1982 to 1994, then as Bishop of Derry from 1994 to 2011.
The Diocese of Raphoe is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in County Donegal in Ulster, Ireland. It is one of eight suffragan dioceses in the inter-Irish primatial ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Armagh.
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From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
This article summarises convictions and allegations of child sexual abuse by clergymen in the Raphoe Diocese, Ireland.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in Ireland established in 2006 in order to develop policies that would foster the prevention of child abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Its main goals are to offer advice on safeguarding best practice, to assist in the development of procedures and to monitor practices. Its members have a good deal of experience in dealing with the problem of sexual abuse. The Board has been described as "the Catholic Church's abuse watchdog".
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The apostolic visitation to Ireland was announced on 20 March 2010 in the pastoral letter written by Pope Benedict XVI to Irish Catholics after the publication of the Ryan and Murphy Reports on Catholic Church sexual abuse of children in Ireland in 2009. The visitation to the dioceses was carried out in the four metropolitan sees during the first few months of 2011. In addition, Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York was appointed to conduct visits to four seminaries to review their formation programs. Members of religious institutes were appointed to visit various congregations. The visitation was essentially pastoral.
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Preparations for the ceremony have been underway for the last two months and by 4pm on Sunday St Eunan's Cathedral will be filled to capacity to witness the 55-year-old Downings man becoming the latest in a long line of Bishops of Raphoe. Monsignor Boyce will be ordained by Archbishop Jorge M. Mejia[sic], the Argentinean Secretary of the Congregation of Bishops in the Vatican, which is the body responsible for the appointment of Bishops. He will be assisted by the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Dr Emmanuel[sic] Gerada and the Bishop of Derry and former Bishop of Raphoe, Most Rev Dr Seamus Hegarty.
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