Pope Francis is cheered by the crowd during the Festival of Families in Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Photos / AP
Pope Francis is cheered by the crowd during the Festival of Families in Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Photos / AP
Pope Francis faced a lukewarm reception and scattered protests today on his trip to Ireland.
Even his vow to rid the church of the "scourge" of sexual abuse and his outrage at those "repugnant crimes" were dismissed as a disappointment by some of Ireland's wounded victims.
But others who met him in private left heartened that he would respond to their plight, including two of the thousands of children who were forcibly put up for adoption for the 'shame' of having been born to unwed mothers.
They said Francis described the corruption and cover-up in the church as "caca" — translated by the Vatican translator for the English speakers as "filth as one sees in the toilet."
The abuse scandal — which has exploded anew in the US but has convulsed Ireland since the 1990s with revelations of unfathomable violence and humiliation against women and children — took centre stage on the first day of Francis' two-day trip. The visit was originally intended to celebrate Catholic families.
Francis responded to the outcry by vowing to end sex abuse and cover-up during a speech to Irish government authorities at Dublin Castle.
"The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — to adequately address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community," he told them. "I myself share these sentiments."
He cited measures taken by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to respond to the crisis. But while Benedict is credited with cracking down on abusers, he never acknowledged the Vatican's role in fuelling a culture of cover-up or sanctioned bishops for failing to protect their flocks from predator priests.
Francis followed his promise with a 90-minute meeting with eight survivors of both clerical and institutional abuse and prayed quietly before a candle lit for victims in Dublin's cathedral. But neither his words nor the meeting with victims is likely to assuage demands for heads to roll.
Pope Francis speaks at Croke Park Stadium on a two-day visit to Ireland.
"Disappointing, nothing new," was the reaction from Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins, a former member of Francis' sex abuse advisory panel who quit last year in frustration. She later took part in Francis' meeting with seven other abuse survivors, including two priests and a public official.
Colm O'Gorman, who is leading a solidarity rally tomorrow in Dublin for abuse victims, said Francis' remarks about sharing the shame felt by Catholics were an "insult to faithful Catholics, who have no reason to feel shame because of the crimes of the Vatican and the institutional church."
The reception that Francis received in Dublin contrasted sharply with the raucous, rock star welcome that greeted St John Paul II in 1979 in the first-ever papal visit here. No one from the public was at the airport or the roads nearby when Francis arrived and the streets near a church-run homeless shelter that Francis visited were practically empty despite barricades designed to hold back crowds.
At one protest, people tossed baby shoes to remind the pope of the poor treatment the Catholic Church doled out to the children of unwed mothers.
Crowds did throng Francis' popemobile route and gathered outside Dublin's cathedral, basking in the sunny weather, and a stadium was nearly full for his evening vigil to close out the church's family rally.
And two of the Irish adoptees said they were heartened Francis said he would address their concerns at Mass tomorrow. They are asking him to publicly state that their mothers had done nothing wrong and to encourage reconciliation between all unwed mothers, many of them now aged, who were forced by society and the church to give up their children.
Paul Redmond, who was born in a home and given up for adoption at 17 days, urged the Pope to publicly call on the six orders of Catholic nuns who ran the homes to accept responsibility for the traumas they caused, issue an apology, and pay for the costs of inquiries.
"The Pope did apologise to all of us for what happened in the homes," he said.
Pope Francis' apologies are not enough, says author and nun Sister Joan Chittister: "It's one thing to sympathize with the victims. ... but it doesn't solve anything. We've been here before." https://t.co/kbzTPvyahZpic.twitter.com/cLCTwTD7wQ
The coalition of survivors of mother and baby homes estimates 100,000 single mothers were forcibly separated from their babies and that 6000 babies died at the homes.
Deeply Catholic Ireland has had one of the world's worst records of clergy sex abuse, crimes that were revealed to its 4.8 million people over the past decade by government-mandated inquiries. The reviews concluded that thousands of children were raped or molested by priests or physically abused in church-run schools — and Irish bishops worked for years to hide those crimes.
After the Irish church enacted tough new norms to fight abuse, it had been looking to the first visit by a pope in 39 years to show a different, more caring church.
Francis urged the Irish to recognise that for all its failings, the Catholic Church educated and cared for generations of Irish children in times of famine and great poverty.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar concurred, saying the church stepped in to care for Irish children when the state did not. But in his speech at Dublin Castle, he said both church and state had a history of "sorrow and shame," and he urged the Pope to ensure that victims of sex abuse find "justice and truth and healing."
