DUBLIN (AFP) - Ireland's most senior Catholic cleric has rejected calls to quit after being accused of trying to cover up allegations of sex abuse by a notorious paedophile priest in the 1970s.

Cardinal Sean Brady faced demands Sunday to resign when it emerged he failed to notify authorities after attending meetings in 1975 where two alleged victims of Father Brendan Smyth signed an oath of secrecy.

Brady, then a priest and part-time secretary to the late Bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan, was present at the meetings at the direction of the bishop, according to a statement from the Catholic Church.

The church was investigating sex abuse complaints against Smyth whose activities led to the fall of prime minister Albert Reynolds' coalition government in 1994.

Smyth, who is believed to have abused hundreds of children over a 40-year period, was finally jailed in the 1990s and died in prison.

Brady insisted Sunday his presence at the meetings was not a "resigning matter" and said he failed to contact the state authorities at the time as he was not the "designated person" to do so.

"I insist again I did act and acted effectively within that (1975) inquiry to produce the grounds for removing Father Smyth from ministry," he told state broadcaster RTE.

"There was no cover-up. I believed those people (the alleged victims). I brought what I heard to the bishop (McKiernan) who proceeded to act.

"Frankly I don't believe that this is a resigning matter," Brady said.

A church statement said Brady had attended two meetings with the alleged victims.

"At those meetings the complainants signed undertakings, on oath, to respect the confidentiality of the information gathering process," said the statement.

"As instructed, and as a matter of urgency, Father Brady passed both reports to Bishop McKiernan for his immediate action," it added.

Maeve Lewis, executive director of the One in Four victims' group, said the cardinal must resign.

"If Brendan Smyth had been convicted in the 1970s I would imagine that hundreds of children would have been saved from sexual abuse.

"Cardinal Brady is the leader of the Irish church. He has to lead the response to the various sex abuse scandals that have broken and this revelation I think removes any credibility Cardinal Brady has and he must resign," she told RTE state radio.

Amnesty International Ireland executive director Colm O'Gorman, himself a clerical abuse victim, said Brady must have realised that child sex abuse was a serious crime and should have been reported to the police.

"What is obscene... is that these victims of rape and abuse by Brendan Smyth were required to sign oaths of secrecy," O'Gorman said.

"I think his position is not just untenable, I think it is impossible," he added.

Mainly Catholic Ireland has been rocked by three judicial reports ordered by the government in the last five years revealing ill-treatment, abuse and cruelty by clerics and a cover-up of their activities by church authorities.

Following a Vatican summit last month with all of the Irish bishops, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue a pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics about the scandal.

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