Pope must make visit count if he’s to deliver a Church fit for future

TODAY Pope Francis arrives in our country. Marble altars and stained-glass windows do not a church make: The church is its people, and the people of the Irish Catholic Church will be glad to have Francis here, yet sad the circumstances of his visit are so overshadowed. The Church, they tell us, moves not in years, but centuries. Its apologists might argue that to expect much change from 1979 – the last time a Pope visited our shores – is unreasonable.

In the intervening years, a black tide of child abuse and cover-ups has immersed the Church globally.

Pope Francis, only the second pontiff ever to come here, is likely to be as impatient as the rest of the world at the unforgivable delays in dealing with it.

The difference, of course, is that as Pope he has the unique authority, and the mantle of infallibility, to invoke the urgent changes so long awaited.

Ireland owes a great debt to the Catholic Church. To the nuns and priests who educated and gave so selflessly.

In their name, and in the name of the overwhelming majority of the clergy, there can be no patience for hiding behind canon law to protect those who preyed on children.

There have been too many pontificates defined by procrastination. We know the price children paid when good men did nothing. We know too that the Church has a special place in many hearts and 78pc of the population still see themselves as Catholic.

But time has changed and the marginalisation of many who feel excluded, and the role – or rather lack of one – for women who make up more than 50pc of our population within the Church, needs to be reviewed.

AND so many look to Pope Francis with hope and expectation. In seeking to rule by example, rather than decree, he has won admiration. But the weight of child sex abuse is destroying the Church. Francis must understand that his fate is either to be the saviour of the Church or crushed beneath it. Beating back waves of opprobrium, while nothing meaningful was done to eradicate a culture of concealment, was never sufficient.

Although the spotlight is rightly on Ireland, this is a worldwide scandal. It seemed almost providential that Cardinal O’Malley withdrew from addressing the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, in order to investigate sex abuse accusations at his St John’s Seminary, Boston, US.

Within days a second, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, – heavily criticised for his handling of child abuse claims in the Pennsylvania grand jury report – also withdrew.

To say that the Church has reached an inflection point globally for stopping the rot is no exaggeration.

Those hurt will be hoping for a commitment from Francis to finally deal with the consequences. If he admits his own failure with sincerity and humility, and sets out an action plan, his visit could be an epoch changing one. The time for resolve and conviction is now. The deep-seated problems Pope Francis must deal with may be formidable, but that makes it all the more critical they be dealt with.

The structure of the curia must be tackled, and the enormous ideological opposition he confronts met head on. Systemic resistance to change must end. The idea that priests are unassailable, or that the blind authority of the Church must remain unchallenged is out of time.

After five years in the Vatican, Pope Francis can not become a hostage of tradition, or imperious dogma.

So today we welcome Pope Francis to Ireland, and the opportunity it presents for him to show that he can make good on the promises he made, and deliver a Church fit for the future.