Abuse victims to demand reform on Vatican visit

IRISH survivors of clerical sex abuse have been invited to travel to the Vatican on October 31 to demand change from the Roman Catholic Church.

The event, billed as a Day of Reformation, is being organised by an Irish-American victim of clerical abuse from Boston.

Bernie McDaid, the son of Donegal parents who was abused as a 12-year-old altar boy 40 years ago, has said survivors will be offering the Church an opportunity to “open up your doors and say you are sorry”.

Mr McDaid, who met Pope Benedict XVI in Washington in 2008, admitted that five-minute meeting had achieved nothing.

He told the Humbert Summer School in Ballina yesterday that he believed the event “on the eve of All Saints” would be an opportunity for people to change the Church and should mark the beginning of a Year for Survivors.

He invited survivors from every parish in Ireland, priests, nuns and anyone who still belonged to the Church, to stand with victims on what he hoped would be a day of healing.

Marie Collins, a fellow survivor of clerical abuse, welcomed the idea and told the school that she hoped to attend, although she cautioned that it should not be another opportunity for the Vatican to ignore victims.

Ms Collins told the school that while trying to bring her priest abuser to justice she realised how “morally bankrupt” the Irish hierarchy was and how they were willing to ignore civil and natural law to protect clerical colleagues.

The Pope’s failure to accept the resignations of two Dublin auxiliary bishops showed how empty his words of “remorse and shame” to the Irish people had been, she claimed.

“How can anyone respect a church which sees half of its members as second class citizens – nothing more than a source of sinful temptation to men?” she asked.

While the law on women having to be churched or cleansed after childbirth had changed, “the medieval male attitudes have not”, she added.

Ms Collins also accused the majority of Irish priests of having let many people down “by their abject failure to speak up” in the wake of the Ryan and Murphy reports.

Augustinian priest Fr Iggy O’Donovan told the school that the recent refusal of the Pope to accept the resignations of the auxiliary bishops has “everything to do with Church authority and little to do with whether or not these gentleman were vigilant in their duties when it came to protecting innocent children”.

Drogheda-based Fr O’Donovan said the message from Rome was very clear – “nobody, not even the vast majority of the faithful, tells us what to do”.

He said past controversial issues such as Humanae Vitae were more about the Church’s authority than about the right of women to contraception.

US-based Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan, of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests group, accused the Catholic Church of misogyny for its failure to ordain women priests.

She said the Vatican was now placing the ordaining of women on the list of grave sins, alongside paedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.

But she warned that like Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus in Birmingham, Alabama, “we will not accept second class membership in our Church. No Vatican punishment will stop our movement”.

Irish women were urged to gather at the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park on September 26, the day earmarked for a boycott of Sunday Mass by 80-year-old Jennifer Sleeman, to highlight the Church’s attitude to women.

Survivor Andrew Madden urged the Government not to “water down” the proposed amendment to the constitution on children’s rights and said mandatory reporting should be put on a statutory basis.

Victims urged to follow the money

PEOPLE seeking justice from the Catholic hierarchy for clerical sex abuse were advised yesterday to “follow the money”.

Lawyer Patrick Wall, who has represented a number of US-based victims of Irish priests Brendan Smith and Sean Fortune, urged people to follow the money “because that is what they care about”. He said a lot of information could be gleaned by watching what bishops do with funds for example if they suddenly sell off land or if they redirect monies into a new account or trust fund.

Mr Wall said there would be no change in the Catholic Church “until a bishop does jail time”.

He said the crime of not notifying the authorities about child abuse had to be enforced and people convicted had to be jailed.

Maeve Lewis, head of One in Four, said it was her “earnest hope” that criminal prosecutions would be brought against anyone in authority who failed to act. She described the lack of response by Irish priests to recent scandals as “incredible”.