Apathy, anger greet Pope
As Pope Francis’s plane descended from the clouds into Dublin airport yesterday, small groups bearing yellow and white Vatican flags appeared on the streets of the Irish capital in a muted welcome, instead of the 100,000 that the organisers had expected to greet the papal motorcade.
In a sign of the change in Irish attitudes – once devoutly Catholic, now firmly secular – the mood was a mixture of excitement for some, but apathy and even anger for others.
In one pub, drinkers glanced only occasionally at a television showing live footage of the Alitalia jet on the runway. ‘‘There’s Air Pope One now,’’ said a bearded drinker in his twenties.
After customers complained that they did not want to watch the Pope, the television was switched off.
It was a mark of how Ireland’s once slavish devotion to the Catholic Church hierarchy had given way to anger over systematic cover-ups of child abuse by priests and sometimes to derision.
The Pope’s visit was billed as a moment of renewal for a much diminished church. It was a chance for the Vatican to show contrition to a country still burning with rage over priests who raped children, incarcerated single mothers and covered their tracks while they did it.
More than that, say victims, it was a chance for the Argentine pontiff to move beyond the usual apologies and promise radical action to punish senior clerics who covered up abuse. But when the moment came for Francis to speak, many were disappointed.
‘‘The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community,’’ Pope Francis told a reception in Dublin Castle. ‘‘I myself share these sentiments.’’
That was not enough for Colm O’Gorman, whose childhood was destroyed by a local priest who raped him for more than two years.
‘‘It astounded me,’’ said O’Gorman, who is now director of Amnesty International Ireland. It was an exercise in diversion and blame-shifting, he added.
‘‘The Pope spoke about the pain and shame of the Catholic community. Is he actually suggesting that ordinary Catholics should feel shame for the cover-up of abuse by the institution?
‘‘I lived with shame for decades because of what happened to me. I’m not interested in the Pope’s shame and distress. What I want is for him to tell the truth and take responsibility for the cover-up. How is the Vatican going to hold anyone to account for a cover-up it won’t even acknowledge or take responsibility for?’’
For decades in Ireland victims of abuse suffered in silence while their abusers preyed on the weakest and most vulnerable. Often priests were moved on to new churches where they found fresh victims. In some parishes, suicide clusters formed where victims, suffocating in silence, killed themselves.
Victims such as O’Gorman say the church’s unwillingness to admit the scale of its strategy of sheltering abusers is reprehensible. Until cardinals are behind bars, many feel justice will not be done.
Addressing the pontiff at Dublin
‘‘The Pope spoke about the pain and shame of the Catholic community. Is he actually suggesting that ordinary Catholics should feel shame for the coverup of abuse by the institution?’’ Colm O’Gorman, abuse victim
Castle, Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, said ‘‘dark aspects’’ of the church’s history were a stain on the state, society and the church.
‘‘There can only be zero tolerance for those who abuse innocent children or who facilitate that abuse,’’ Varadkar said.
‘‘We must now ensure that from words flow actions. Above all, Holy Father, we ask to you to listen to the victims and to the survivors ... with humility and compassion.’’ It was an astonishing speech by the prime minister of a country where church and state were once inseparable.
Yesterday’s atmosphere contrasted with the euphoria that flooded Ireland in 1979 when Pope John Paul II toured the country like a rock star and 2.5m people – a majority of the population – turned out to see him. This was at a time when homosexuality, contraception and even divorce were illegal.
Such was the passion of the moment that the birth rate spiked after that peculiarly Irish Catholic summer of love. That generation – named ‘‘the Pope’s children’’ – would go on to transform Ireland into an unrecognisably liberal country.
Karol Mannion was born nine months after the visit and got his first name from the Polish pontiff’s original name Karol Wojtyla. Of Pope Francis, Mannion said: ‘‘I’m happy he has come to Ireland and I still have my faith. But there’s no denying the damage the church inflicted on Irish society.
‘‘They burnt too many bridges – most people have left the church and they won’t be coming back.’’ – Sunday Times