Williams: Scandal costly to Irish church

LONDON, April 3 (UPI) -- The child abuse scandal in Ireland has stripped the Roman Catholic church there of its credibility, the head of the Anglican church says.

Rowan Williams, who heads both the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion as archbishop of Canterbury, was unusually open in his discussion of the scandal, The Daily Telegraph reported. He gave an interview to be broadcast Monday on BBC 4.

"I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now," Williams said. "An institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility -- that's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland."

Cardinal Sean Brady, the senior bishop in Ireland, has been under pressure to step down. Two government reports released last year detailed decades of physical and sexual abuse of children in church-run institutions and sexual abuse by parish priests.