DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT was expressed by clerical child sexual abuse survivors yesterday following a meeting with Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin over this week’s gathering of Irish bishops in Rome.
But Archbishop Martin said he would be “more optimistic” about the ongoing church response to the abuse issue.
Speaking after the meeting with survivors at the Archbishop’s house in Drumcondra, he admitted “there are times when my views are different to others”among the Irish bishops, and “there is obviously isolation” where he was concerned.
He advised that “the nature of the letter the pope will write may not be exactly what people are expecting and we shouldn’t be putting our hopes in any individual moment in what I believe is a process”.
One in Four executive director Maeve Lewis said the meeting with Archbishop Martin had been “very disappointing”. He had been unable “in any way” to explain why concerns they had expressed in a letter to the pope last week had not been addressed in Rome this week and he would not comment on the position of the Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, she said.
Abuse survivor Marie Collins said: “We got very little. There is very little to look forward to and I am totally depressed with this meeting.” She said Archbishop Martin seemed to be in a different position now than he was prior to his going to Rome. “I’m totally despairing of the whole thing.” However, she added she “would always talk to Archbishop Martin”.
Andrew Madden, who had been abused by former priest Ivan Payne, said: “I feel that I’ve met a different man this morning than the man I met last Saturday who seemed to be very much on our side. I did put it to him that he seemed to have come back with his wings clipped but he said that wasn’t the case.”
He also took great exception to a line in the pope’s statement last Tuesday that bishops were going to take concrete steps to help survivors. “The idea that Martin Drennan is a fit man to identify steps to help victims is obscene,” he said.
Speaking to the media later, Archbishop Martin denied that his wings had been clipped. “I follow my own conscience. Sometimes I’m in agreement with people, sometimes I’m not. I’m saddened that the survivors feel so disappointed . . . But they’re the ones who suffered. I appreciate their understanding and if they feel disappointed, they’ve a right to be disappointed.”
He said that in Rome “there was no denial of the Murphy report at this meeting. There was no challenge of it. I began my intervention with the paragraph ‘it happened’, to make sure that there was no doubt about what happened.” He would not comment on the position of Bishop Drennan.
Where the Bishops’ Conference was concerned, he said: “There are times when my views are different to others. On the other hand I would say it’s a long time since the relations between the Archbishop of Dublin and the Archbishop of Armagh have been as good.”
He continued: “There is obviously isolation. There are criticisms of me in all your papers and media by people who disagree with the way I addressed the Murphy report. I stand over that.
“I believe that the only answer we can say is that something terrible happened in this diocese and we got it extraordinarily wrong, full stop.”