Pope apologizes for church ‘crimes’ in Ireland

KNOCK, IRELAND — Pope Francis issued a sweeping apology Sunday for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying church officials regularly didn’t respond with compassion to the many abuses children and women suffered over the years and vowing to work for justice.

Francis was interrupted by applause as he read the apology out loud at the start of mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Hundreds of kilometres away, sombre protesters marched through the Irish town of Tuam and recited the names of an estimated 800 babies and young children who died at a Catholic Church-run orphanage there, most during the 1950s.

“Elizabeth Murphy, four months. Annie Tyne, three months. John Joseph Murphy, 10 months,” the protesters said in memory of children who were buried in a mass grave.

Francis, who is on a weekend visit to Ireland, told the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out for mass that he met on Saturday with victims of all sorts of abuses: sexual and labour, as well as children taken from their unwed mothers and forcibly put up for adoption.

Responding to a plea from the adoptees, the Pope assured their aging biological mothers that it wasn’t a sin to go looking for the lost children they had lost.

“May the Lord keep this state of shame and compunction and give us strength so this never happens again, and that there is justice,” he said.