CORI REACTION:THE CONFERENCE of Religious in Ireland (Cori) said the pastoral letter was an important part of the process of confronting the mistakes of the past, encouraging healing and ensuring that the safeguarding of children was an absolute priority.
Cori represents 135 religious congregations and has circulated the letter to all its members. Its director general Sr Marianne O’Connor said Cori particularly welcomed the pope’s acknowledgement that abuse victims and their families had suffered grievously. She said the pope had recognised that all religious were suffering as a result of the sins of their predecessors. They had “betrayed a sacred trust or failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse”, she said.
Sr Marianne noted the pope’s commitment to conducting an apostolic visitation to certain dioceses in Ireland, as well as seminaries and religious congregations. “It is unclear as to how many religious congregations will be part of this process and we await the detail on this as referred to in the letter,” she said.
Fr Kevin Hegarty, one of the first priests to publicly challenge the church’s handling of sex abuse, said the letter was “lucid and accessible” but only the victims could judge if the pope’s words addressed their pain.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio, he said his parishioners saw the letter as “a very small step. It will take a long time to build up any level of trust in the Catholic Church in Ireland, I believe”.
Fr Hegarty noted there was no reference to the Vatican’s role in covering up the abuse. “I think that role should be examined and I would like to see that happen. My own intuition is that the cover-up extended beyond Ireland, into the Vatican.”
He said it was good the pope recognised the failure of church leadership in Ireland to respond adequately, but it was “trite” to link child sex abuse with the secularisation of Irish society. “I think that the roots of this are a lot deeper.”
Fr Hegarty said he would have liked to have seen acknowledgement of the work that went into the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy reports. He said the church often talked about the truth, but it took the State to reveal the “awful truth” about the church.
Meanwhile, Passionist priest and author Fr Brian D’Arcy expressed concern at the reference to the apostolic visitation.
He said the US had an apostolic visitation in the wake of its abuse crisis, when the “heavy hitters” from the Vatican were brought in.
“The things they will be weeding out in Ireland is the things they were weeding out in America and that was any laxity with regard to holding the moral law of the church teaching, anything that might suggest a priest should marry, anything that might suggest that there should be women priests. That will be hit very hard,” he said.
