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A10 WORLD NEWS
Friday 24 august 2018
Irish church's fall from grace haunts pope's Ireland trip

By NICOLE WINFIELD tutions, how Irish bishops
PIETRO DE CRISTOFARO shuttled known pedophiles
Associated Press around the country and
BLESSINGTON, Ireland (AP) to unwitting parishes in the
— When St. John Paul II U.S. and Australia, and how
visited Ireland in 1979, the Dublin bishops didn't tell po-
Catholic Church wielded lice of any crimes by clerics
such power that homo- until forced to by lawsuits in
sexuality, divorce, abortion the mid-1990s.
and contraception were The Irish church eventually
barely spoken of, much less unveiled a policy requiring
condoned. Catholic bish- the mandatory reporting of
ops had advised the au- all suspected sex crimes to
thors of Ireland's constitu- police, but the policy was
tion, and still held sway. rejected by the Vatican in
Today, as Pope Francis pre- 1997.
pares to visit, the Catholic That position, combined
Church enjoys no such in- with the Vatican's refusal
fluence. to cooperate in the fact-
As once-isolated Ireland finding probes, prompted
experienced a tide of one of the inquiries to find
secularism and economic the Vatican itself culpable
boom that opened it to the in promoting a culture of
world, the church largely Tourists pose for photos with a newly unveiled wax work of Pope Francis ahead of Pope Francis' cover-up.
lost its centrality in Irish life. visit to Ireland, in Dublin, Thursday Aug. 23, 2018. In response, Ireland's then-
Then the church — while still Associated Press Prime Minister Enda Kenny
maintaining a stronghold issued a blistering attack
on education and health If that weren't enough, an an unmarked grave? The the focus, even if Francis on the Vatican in Parlia-
care in Ireland — lost its amateur Irish historian re- shame of having been will be meeting with abuse ment in 2011, accusing it of
moral credibility following searching the deaths of born to an unwed mother. victims during his 36-hour downplaying the rape of
revelations of the wide- some 800 youngsters dis- Francis will be confronted visit. children to protect its own
spread sexual abuse of covered a mass grave in a with that haunting past Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the power and reputation.
children in its churches, the sewage area at a church- when he visits Ireland this Irish-born, U.S.-raised offi- Kenny's speech, in which
physical torture of young- run orphanage where the weekend to close out the cial in charge of Catholic he denounced "the dys-
sters in its schools and the children had been sent. Vatican's big Catholic fam- families at the Vatican, said function, disconnection,
humiliation of women in its Their sin for being exiled to ily rally. The event, sched- he expected that Francis elitism ... the narcissism that
workhouses. the home and buried in uled three years ago, had would speak out about all dominate the culture of the
been aimed at boosting kinds of abuses suffered Vatican to this day," led to
the church's visibility and by the Irish, including fami- a diplomatic standoff that
voice, but a fresh wave of lies who lost children dur- only really ended when
scandal across the Atlan- ing "the troubles," Northern Ireland re-opened the Vati-
tic has overshadowed the Ireland's decades-long can embassy in 2014 after
visit. bloody sectarian conflict. closing it for nearly three
"I have no trouble nailing "I do not think that these years.
my colors to the mast that wounds are easily healed," Irish academics see Ken-
I am a practicing Catho- Farrell told the AP. "I do ny's speech as the final nail
lic," said Carmel Dillon, think, though, that it's time in the coffin of the once-
principal of St. Mary's junior for the church once again symbiotic relationship of
school in the picturesque to make itself known, in a church and state that had
town of Blessington, south- new image of the church. so characterized Irish life.
west of Dublin. "However, it An image that's more It was "a moment that en-
is becoming more difficult open, more caring, more capsulated the fall from
in circles to state that you understanding of the real- grace of an institution
are a Catholic." ity of the lives of people to- which had hitherto been
Ahead of the visit, a "Say day." culturally indistinguishable
Nope to the Pope" cam- That is not the Catholic from Ireland as a nation,"
paign has attracted a Church of Ireland's past. according to the 2017
strong following and Over the last 10 years, a book "Tracing the Cultural
peaceful protests have series of government-initi- Legacy of Irish Catholicism:
been planned. Posters ated investigations have From Galway to Cloyne
were put up around Dublin uncovered the horrific se- and Beyond."
featuring an upside-down crets that the Irish church In the years since Kenny's
Holy See flag to "depict the had long sought to bury, speech, Irish voters have
lifelong suffering and an- like the remains of children overturned the country's
guish that clerical sexual at the Bon Secours mother constitutional ban on abor-
abuse has left." and baby home in Tuam, tion and legalized same-
Vatican spokesman Greg County Galway. sex marriage. And in the
Burke said Francis knows The reports have detailed years after John Paul's 1979
well that "any trip to Ireland how tens of thousands of visit, Ireland decriminalized
was not only going to be children suffered wide- homosexuality and legal-
about the family." But he ranging abuses in church- ized contraception and
said family life would still be run workhouse-style insti- divorce.q