One question above all dominated discussion in advance of Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland in August 2018: would he meet survivors of clerical child sex abuse?
Since Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979, everything changed within the Catholic Church in Ireland. A tsunami of clerical abuse allegations had all but destroyed the Church’s reputation in the eyes of many believers, and there was no chance of Francis enjoying the same uncritical reception which John Paul received when he visited Ireland.
The announcement that Francis would meet survivors of clerical abuse was only made four days before his visit.
The location and timing of the meeting were kept secret until the day before. Eventually eight people met the pope.
The eight were Clodagh Malone and Paul Redmond, who had both been born in mother and baby homes; former Dublin city councillor Damian O’Farrell, who was sexually abused as a child by a member of the Christian Brothers; Bernadette Fahy, who had spent much of her childhood in Goldenbridge orphanage; the well-known campaigner and victim of clerical sex abuse Marie Collins; and an anonymous victim of the notorious paedophile priest Fr Tony Walsh.
There were also two priests in attendance, Fr Joe McDonald of St Matthew’s Church in Ballyfermot and Fr Paddy McCafferty of the Corpus Christi parish in Belfast. They too were victims of clerical sex abuse.
The meeting took place at the papal nuncio’s residence on the Navan Road in Dublin on Saturday, August 25th after a long day for the pope. It was scheduled to last 30 minutes, but lasted 90 minutes and the pope, who already had been through a 15-hour day, ended up late for his engagement that night in Croke Park.
Those present did not know what to expect, but they certainly did not expect the pope to use a four-letter word to describe the cover-up of clerical sex abusers.
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“He drew a picture of a toilet,” recalled Malone. “Anything that goes into that is caca.”
The translator interpreted it as “filth you would see in the toilet”, though it can be more succinctly translated into a common expletive.
“We were all carrying our crosses going into that meeting. He was meeting us to learn. I came away from the meeting thinking it was extremely positive,” she said.
Malone spent 10 weeks in St Patrick’s Guild mother and baby home in Dublin and was later abused by a Jesuit priest after she was adopted.
She was particularly glad that Pope Francis had scotched any suggestion that it was a mortal sin for a mother to look for her adopted child.
“It really opened the floodgates for elderly mothers looking for their children. For my community, I felt that Pope Francis opened up the floodgates,” she said.
A few other survivors, she recalled, “were like pit bulls” and vented their anger at the pope, who Malone recalled remained polite and courteous throughout.
“I thought he was a very charismatic man,” she said. “He was a decent man. Everyone liked him. You couldn’t dislike him. We were trying to reach out to a man who could make a difference for us.
“I came away that night and I was able to forgive. It was incredible, but I can only say that for myself. You have to forgive because you have to live your life.”
Long-time abuse survivor and campaigner Marie Collins went into the meeting seeking answers as to the status of the Vatican’s pontifical commission for the protection of minors.
Collins resigned from the commission in 2017 stating that she did not believe the Vatican Curia took the issue seriously.
“I asked him why he had moved the commission into the control of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” she said. “He said he couldn’t trust it any more. I believed at the time and still do that somebody must have been whispering in his ear to stop the commission being independent and he believed what he was told.
“The commission hasn’t made any progress and it is under the control of the Curia now.”
[ Remembering Pope Francis' visit to IrelandOpens in new window ]
She described him as a “very straightforward man who didn’t beat about the bush. If he had something to say, he said it.
“He was very good at that meeting. His secretary came a few times about the time and he shooed him away. He wanted to listen to all the survivors.”
She remembered him being “angry and very horrified” to hear that some Irish Catholics believed it to be a mortal sin that a mother would look for her adopted child.
The pope did not request confidentiality arising out of the meeting and told those involved to say whatever they felt afterwards. Officially there were no photographs, but the pope allowed people to take snaps on their mobile phones.
Bernadette Fahy, a survivor of Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin, said the meeting might not have taken place but for the intervention of the then Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin.
Fahy was sent to the notorious orphanage with her three brothers when she was seven, in 1961, and stayed there until she was 18. She was surprised that the pope seemed not to “know anything about institutional abuse”.
“He didn’t know what an industrial or a reformatory school was. He didn’t know what a Magdalene laundry was and he didn’t know what a mother and baby home was in Ireland, though he had some sense of those because they were in Latin America,” she said.
“All of that was news to him and that was quite shocking. It seemed like it was all news to the pope.”
Nevertheless, she told RTÉ Radio 1’s News at One programme that she liked the pope “as a person”.
“He was doing his best, and I think that the Catholic community has lost somebody really good,” she said.
“Right up until the last minute he was doing what he said he was going to do with people, and be out among them.”
