Abuse victim deeply unhappy at stance of new archbishop

ABUSE victim Colm O’Gorman is appalled that the new Archbishop of Dublin missed a golden opportunity yesterday to acknowledge the Church failed people like him.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin met members of the media on the eve of his liturgy of welcome which will take place later today in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.

The former permanent observer of the Holy See in Geneva said he understood there were many people very disturbed by the scandals in the church, a matter that was being addressed so the church could regain its credibility.

The 58-year-old Dublin-born archbishop said he hoped the diocese’s new Child Protection Office, which would be in place by the end of next month, would go forward “in many ways” to addressing the specific issue of child abuse.

He said there must be a way of ensuring that lawyers don’t determine the pastoral practice of the Church.

People in the Vatican were just as shocked as anybody else by the sex scandals that had rocked the church in the US, he said. Priests were stunned that the response to them was neither adequate nor quick enough.

Newly established rules, he said, would not be enough to address the problem and the church had to bring more heart and energy to making them a reality. He believed the church must be less authoritative and be a more a listening and questioning one.

Archbishop Martin said he had also found that very many women felt they were not fully understood or made fully welcome in the Irish church.

“The Irish church has been authoritarian and must learn to be a different sort of church,” he said.

Mr O’Gorman, director of One in Four, said he had hoped the new archbishop would bring a breath of fresh air to the issue of child abuse. He was, however, deeply disappointed by what the archbishop had to say on the issue.

“What victims of abuse and those who lost faith in the church need is a final and full acknowledgment of past failures,” he said.

Mr O’Gorman said the Catholic Church told him from the beginning that the truth sets people free. “That’s what the church needs to remember and that what Archbishop Martin needs to remember at this point.”