Pope Francis is on everyone’s lips but perspective is being lost
‘ARE you going to the pub?’ Sensing the Zeitgeist, the little Whirlwind Wonder looked at me doe-eyed and enquired if I was going to join the masses this Sunday, in ‘the pub’ in the Phoenix Park presumably. I’m not going to either, if you are interested. My daughter and son were due to be among the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, travelling this Sunday, but common sense prevailed and a logistical nightmare narrowly avoided over the weekend when it was decided to keep them a good hundred miles of a safe distance away from the Dublin melee.
The thoughts of going to the supermarket with young children are enough to test the mental resolve of any parent, nevermind negotiating buses, endless queues and hours of waiting around.
The consternation about Pope Francis’s visit has had me doing a double take at newspaper piles. If the headlines are to be believed seeing the Pope could lead to hospitalisation, even death.
The elderly are all but being told they are putting their lives in danger travelling to what, in all likelihood, will be a grand (and possibly truly great) day out at the park, albeit it one which was physically taxing. The Pope arrives in the middle of week of scandal for the Catholic Church following revelations of the latest church cover up, this time involving 1,000 children in Pennsylvania.
When he was elected Pope five years ago, I, like many, was hopeful that he could have some positive influence within the church. From a humble background in Argentina, one of his first acts was opening a day care centre in the Vatican. He espoused a life without pomp and luxury within the church at a time when German ‘Bishop of Bling’ Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was accused of spending more than €31m on renovating his official residence. German media reported at the time that the quarters were fitted with a €15,000 bath, a conference table for €25,000 and a private chapel worth €2.9m. The bishop was one of many who lived it up while parishioners struggled to make ends meet. Meanwhile sex abuse scandals, which have long been a thorn in the side of the religion, continued to emerge.
Pope Francis made headlines earlier this year when he backed church leaders in Chile over victims, claiming, in effect, that they were lying about being sexually abused. A few months later he apologised saying he was part of the problem. The build up to his visit has been marred by extreme views on either side, following hot on the heels of the emotionally charged Save the 8th Referendum. When he arrives in Ireland this Saturday he has the opportunity to go some way towards being the solution by healing the deep psychological wounds many victims of priests have been living with for years and decades in some instances.
These people include children, whose youths were stolen from them and adults who have lived with shame, mental illness and untold horror due to the abuse facilitated by an unseeing, uncaring, complicit, at times, church.
Yesterday (Monday) Pope Francis begged for forgiveness over the abuse in Pennsylvania. ‘With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives,’ Francis wrote. ‘We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,’ he said.
Keep the apologies coming!