DUBLIN, Ireland — The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, rocked for a decade by sex scandals, on Wednesday made its biggest admission yet: 102 of its Dublin priests past and present, or 3.6 percent of the total, are suspected of abusing children. The disclosure comes a week before the government convenes a probe into how church and state authorities conspired, by negligence and design, to cover up decades of child abuse within the Dublin priesthood. “It’s very frightening for me to see that in some of these cases, so many children were abused. It’s very hard to weigh that up against anything,” said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, a Vatican diplomat assigned to Dublin in 2003 to address the problem in Ireland’s largest Catholic congregation. Since his appointment, the archdiocese — home to more than 1 million Catholics — has been going over the personnel records of more than 2,800 priests who have worked in Dublin since 1940. The conclusion: 102 are suspected of abusing children, 32 have been sued, and eight have been convicted of criminal offenses. The archdiocese already has paid $7 million, including $2 million in both sides’ legal bills. Martin says the […]