Pope to meet bishops over sex abuse report

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI will meet with Irish bishops to discuss a report that the Catholic Church in Dublin covered up years of sexual child abuse, the Vatican says.

Cardinal Sean Brady and the archbishop of Dublin, Monsignor Diarmid Martin, will travel to the Vatican Friday to meet the pope, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Monday.

The discussion will center on an Irish report, issued in November, that four former Dublin archbishops did not report child sex abuse to police from the 1960s through the 1980s, ANSA said.

The Murphy report detailed complaints of abuse from 320 people from 1974 to 2004. The Dublin archdiocese only began notifying civil authorities in 1995, the report said.

Starting in the mid-1990s, child abuse scandals have hit the Catholic Church in the United States, Australia, Canada and Ireland.

In Ireland, politicians, including President Mary McAleese, have called for criminal cases to be brought against priests, ANSA said.