Pope must answer difficult questions – ignoring wounds will make them fester

CAN the Catholic Church really be considering another own goal? Clerical abuse survivor Marie Collins excoriated the Vatican on RTÉ’s ‘Today With Miriam O’Callaghan’ yesterday over its resistance to a muchneeded papal ‘mea culpa’ to Irish victims of clerical sexual abuse and victims of abuse in Church-run institutions.

Ireland has seen a spectacular fall from grace by the Catholic Church over the years as the horrors of industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, the mother and baby homes, and the clerical sexual abuse of children, as well as the cover -ups, came to light. At the MacGill Summer School, Fr Kevin Hegarty referred to these scandals as the Irish Church’s “chamber of horrors”. This is a sentiment the public agrees with.

The visit of the Pope is being seen as an opportunity for the Church to own up to its failings to the people of this country. “The world knows the Church has been devastated by abuse and children and women have been devastated by what happened to them.

“If the Church tries to airbrush it out during the Pope’s visit or the World Meeting of Families, it would be just another sign that they are so detached from the real world that they are irrelevant,” Ms Collins said.

She warned the Vatican against “delusional” thinking that it can gloss over this issue by manipulating Pope Francis’s schedule to ensure there is no time to meet survivors.

Whoever is advising the

Vatican does not know the Irish faithful. They have long ago had enough of cover-ups. Failure to give due recognition to the damage done by the Church will alienate the faithful further and diminish Pope Francis.

These scandals are the primary cause of the Irish Church’s demise. Ignoring a wound means it festers and does greater damage in the long term.

As Dr Mary McAleese highlighted yesterday, ‘The Economist’ this week warned that the Pontiff’s image as a friend of the vulnerable will be tarnished unless he can show that his Church takes action against its own officials who exploit those within its power.

Pope Francis would be well advised to meet Ms Collins and other survivors and to listen to what they have to say. Ms Collins has said she is willing to meet him and furthermore she is willing to question the Pope about his plans for a proper penal process for bishops found to be negligent in relation to abuse or to have covered up abuse.

Listening to hard-hitting advice and answering difficult questions from survivors might not be as pleasing for the Pontiff as engaging with sycophantic prelates, but it might save Francis from another debacle like Chile, where the lies told by the Chilean bishops left the Pope shamed and sullied.