DISILLUSIONED clerical abuse victims say they are expecting little from the Pope’s pastoral letter to the Irish people, due to be released today.
The Vatican confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI’s pastoral letter was signed off yesterday and will be published today by the Catholic Church.
It’s understood the letter will be available online this morning and will be read out by priests in parishes across the country at Masses tonight and tomorrow.
The letter comes after a horrific two weeks for the Catholic Church worldwide with fresh claims emerging that Pope Benedict failed to sufficiently protect children from paedophile priests while an archbishop in Munich from 1977 to 1982. German church officials have described the levels of complaints by alleged victims as being like a "tsunami".
The Catholic Church’s child protection record has also been under attack in the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Italy and here calls remain for Archbishop of Armagh Cardinal Seán Brady’s resignation over his involvement in a secret canonical tribunal that tried serial paedophile Brendan Smyth.
It is unlikely that the Holy See’s letter will make reference to the Cardinal Brady revelations or that it will make reference to any reorganisation of Church structures and the number of dioceses in this country.
Clerical abuse victim, Andrew Madden said he is "not expecting anything much" from the pastoral letter as he already had his hopes dashed by the Pope’s statement following his meeting with Irish bishops in Rome last month. "There won’t be anything meaningful in this. It won’t deal with thereal issues — responsibility for the cover-up — but will just be flowery language. I think that the Church have set themselves up for a fall again. It won’t meet any of the big expectations that are out there," he said.
Marie Collins, another abuse victim, said: "I expect there will be a lot of condemnation of abuse and abusers and how it has affected children and the Church but they won’t admit responsibility for the cover-up. There will be talk of repentance and renewal but there won’t be an apology for the cover-up from the hierarchy."
Last night, abuse support group, One in Four, published the "papal letter" that it believes "abuse survivors deserve" — a letter where the Vatican fully admits to pursuing a "deliberate policy of cover-up", where it apologises for taking such an adversarial approach to victims’ complaints and where it commits the Church to the mandatory reporting of sexual abuse to statutory authorities.
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This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, March 20, 2010
