Abuse survivor tells Pope to ‘face down’ resistance to safeguarding
■ Francis expected to meet with victims today
ABUSE survivor Marie Collins has sent a strong message to Pope Francis, urging him to use his papal powers and “face down” the Vatican resistance blocking safeguarding reforms.
Speaking to the media after addressing the first ever safeguarding discussion at a World Meeting of Families, at the RDS, Ms Collins said Pope Francis, who arrives this morning to begin his historic two-day visit, “has got powers over and above everybody else. He can no longer countenance this sort of resistance”.
She warned that there was still those who were in denial about clerical abuse in the Catholic Church.
“It is not imaginary. There are people who would prefer to believe that there are multitudes of false allegations, which we know there aren’t.
“They also go along with the myth that it is all down to homosexual priests and they like to think it is a media campaign against the Church,” she said.
“They like to think that survivors like myself, who have spoken out, are just enemies of the Church who want to destroy the Church. It is more comfortable to think that.”
She warned that every day that goes by, and safety is not properly imposed, and those who would protect abusers are not properly dealt with, “more children are being harmed when they don’t need to be harmed”.
“It is time that the Pope actually faces down this resistance and takes strong action,” she challenged.
The 71-year-old, who was abused as a 13-year-old by a Dublin priest, was one of a panel of safeguarding experts who spoke yesterday morning to the World Meeting of Families and she outlined a series of reforms that are still needed in the Church.
She questioned why the successful policy of zero tolerance adopted by the Catholic Church in the US was not in place in every country in the world.
“We have the template, they don’t need to reinvent the wheel, bring it in,” she urged bishops’ conferences. “Every child is precious; how well they are protected or how vulnerable they are allowed to be by the Church should not depend on where they live,” she told a news conference.
Ms Collins also gave her backing to Cardinal Sean O’Malley, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Ms Collins, who resigned from the Vatican’s child protection advisory body in March 2017 in protest over the blocking of the commission’s work, said the Archbishop of Boston had worked “very hard” to try to achieve safeguarding changes.
“The fact that the commission has not been able to achieve anything in the last four years is not down to Cardinal O’Malley. It is down to the resistance within the Vatican,” she said.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin attended the discussion. He told the Irish Independent that he found the points on safeguarding and the formation of seminarians “very strong”.
“It is something that is rarely stressed and something that we have to look at carefully,” he said.
Meanwhile, a group of clerical abuse survivors and activists have called for a “zero-tolerance” approach to be taken against priests involved in the child abuse scandals.
Members of the Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) group – a justice project aimed at holding the Catholic Church to account for clerical sex abuse – gathered in Dublin yesterday to react to the World Meeting of Families’ session on safeguarding children.
The ECA group also wants a no-tolerance approach to be adopted against any bishop involved in the cover-up.
“Here is a simple axiom of justice: It’s not OK to cover up for child sex crimes,” said ECA founder Mr Peter Isely yesterday.
Pope Francis will hold a private meeting in Dublin today with a small number of clerical abuse victims.