Abuse scandal: Pope asks for Church to be forgiven for past sins,
Justice must be pursued for victims of clerical abuse, insists Francis
POPE Francis made a dramatic plea for forgiveness for the decades of abuse carried out by the Catholic Church before he ended his historic visit to Ireland yesterday.
His strongly-worded statement at the Phoenix Park Mass, to pursue justice for victims of clerical abuse, was handwritten and delivered in Spanish, which took many people including the Italian interpreter by surprise.
A total of 500,000 tickets were snapped up for the Mass in Dublin but the crowd appeared significantly smaller.
The pontiff told those pilgrims who braved the rain: “We ask forgiveness in Ireland, for our abuse of power, conscience and sexual abuses perpetrated by members with roles of responsibility in the Church.
“In a special way we ask pardon for all the abuses committed in various types of institutions run by male and female religious, and by other members of the Church. And we ask for forgiveness for those cases of exploitation through manual work that many young women and men were exploited to.”
He was applauded when he also asked for forgiveness for “all the times single mothers had been told that to seek their children, whom they had been separated from, was a mortal sin, and sons and daughters were told the same. This was not a mortal sin”.
The pontiff ended the prayer by asking: “Give us the strength to work for justice. Amen.”
There had been criticism from abuse survivors and many others that the Pope had not gone far enough in his opening speech to a wide-ranging and distinguished audience in Dublin Castle shortly after his arrival on Saturday.
By contrast, the speech that day by Taioseach Leo Varadkar was regarded as a firm, direct and balanced warning that the Church must show action in dealing practically with sex abuse, rather that issuing continuing apologies.
Just prior to his apology at Closing Mass, the Pope said he had spent time on Saturday in Dublin with a group of victims of sexual abuse. The group included Fr Patrick McCafferty from Belfast, who suffered clerical abuse in his earlier life.
In his final engagement yesterday before leaving for the airport, Pope Francis returned to the theme of child abuse in an address to his Irish bishops. He said: “A recurrent theme of my visit has been the Church’s need to acknowledge and remedy, with evangelical honesty and courage, past failures with regard to the protection of children and vulnerable adults.
“In recent years you as a body have moved resolutely forward, not only by undertaking paths of purification and reconciliation with victims of abuse, but also with the help of the National Board of Safeguarding Children, by establishing a stringent set of norms aimed at ensuring the safety of young persons.
“In these years all of us have had our eyes opened to the gravity and extent of sexual abuse in various social settings.
“In Ireland, as elsewhere, the honesty and integrity with which the Church chooses to confront this painful chapter in her history can offer an example and a warning to society as a whole.”
Despite the wet weather, many thousands at the open air mass earlier received communion from nearly 2,000 volunteers.
The Pope also issued a heartfelt statement thanking everyone who had made the visit possible.
He said: “I am sure that the success of this World Meeting of Families is due to the quiet and persevering prayers of the people.”
Right to the end there was an awareness that history was being made in an Ireland that had changed dramatically since the last papal visit, by Pope John Paul II, in 1979.
The Papal Mass in Dublin came hours after Francis called for firm action in pursuing justice for church abuse victims.
On the second day of his weekend visit, he said the crimes committed by members of the church had left an “open wound”.
At an address at the holy shrine of Knock, in Co Mayo, yesterday morning, he said no-one could fail to be moved by stories of young abuse victims who were “robbed of their innocence” and left with “painful memories”.
Thousands who came to see the Pope at a site revered by Irish Catholics applauded as he urged decisive steps to bring truth to the victims.
“I beg the Lord’s forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” he said.