Why it’s high time we stopped scapegoating the vast majority of good and decent priests and nuns Michael Kelly is editor of The Irish Catholic

In 2005, Nano Nagle — the founder of the Presentation Sisters — was voted Ireland’s Greatest Woman. Today, such has been the relentless focus on the minority of nuns who betrayed their vocation and inflicted abuse on those in their care, it’s hard to know whether she would even make it to a shortlist.

The 18th century nun left a remarkable legacy. Growing up under the harsh Penal Laws, her well-to-do Catholic family, remarkably, managed to hold on to their land.

She was educated in France and was part of high society in Paris before entering a convent there.

She soon returned home and opened a network of schools that prioritised the education of indigent boys and girls. She also became the first woman since St Brigid to found a congregation of women religious.

Nano died of TB in 1794, but her charisma spread far and wide and there were soon schools all over North America, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Nano was not alone: Mary Aikenhead founded the Religious Sisters of Charity. Some of her earliest followers died having contracted infectious diseases from the poor people they worked with. Catherine McAuley founded the Sisters of Mercy as a corps of social workers to care for the forgotten poor.

In 1800, there were just 120 nuns in Ireland. By 1900, there were 8,000, working in communities all across the country; the vast majority of them doing nothing but good.

Notwithstanding the horrendous and heartbreaking abuse revealed in recent years, religious congregations made an incalculably positive contribution.

But, if you were a visitor from Mars watching television, you’d

Unfairly maligned: priests and nuns (as portrayed in Call the Midwife) are increasingly seen in a bad light, despite the vast majority being wholly selfless

be forgiven for thinking nuns were a nasty cult.

The cliche of the nasty nun, or deviant priest, is now a staple of cinema and television. Some of

this is inevitably justified; the history of the Church hasn’t been all great and too many men and women betrayed their commission and abused and neglected

those in their care. But when was the last time you saw a priest, or a nun, portrayed in a positive light?

This is despite the fact that

it is self-evident that the overwhelming majority of clerics and religious people lived lives of heroic self-sacrifice and brought immense good and consolation to those they served — often in difficult circumstances.

The BBC and ITV have been better at the balancing act. The BBC’s adaptation of Les Miserables portrays the priest as not only good, but saintly. Similarly, ITV’s new Poirot is revealed as a former cleric who distinguished himself in wartime Belgium.

Add to that the charming nuns in Call the Midwife and you have more than enough positive portrayals of religious life to balance the bad eggs.

One of the reasons why history remains so contentious is that it informs the present. Just a few years ago, it would’ve been entirely uncontroversial to say that the good the Church has done far outweighs the negatives. Today, many people would likely dispute that claim despite the clear evidence.

I’ve been in Killarney this week, where I’ve spent a few days with the priests of the Kerry diocese, looking to the future. I experienced, to a man, a bunch of dedicated, committed and humble priests. So much of their ministry is hidden from view, since, very often, people never see the value of a priest until they need one.

The priests I met are tired. Many of them are being pulled from pillar to post, serving ever-greater geographical areas with fewer men coming after them. They’re also tired of negative caricatures of themselves and other religious sisters and brothers in the media.

They are as let down and horrified as anyone at the rotten behaviour of some of their confreres and the Church’s cover-up and obfuscation. But they’re also sick to their stomach about the constant negative portrayal of what they do.

People in the pews are, too. Catholics know all too well that the priests and nuns that they know are selfless people who desire nothing other than to serve the people and try to make the world a better place.