Independent commission will help heal hurt

I think it is a good proposal from the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, to have an independent commission into all the history of what Fr Brendan Smyth did in assaulting so many children in the Republic and Northern Ireland over a 40-year period from the late 1940s to about 1990, but I think it needs to include the stories of American Catholic children he came into contact with in North Dakota and Rhode Island, and anywhere else in that country, and what the civil and Church authorities there knew about him.

This could be in the form of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they had in South Africa some years ago, where people told their stories without fear of retribution or punishment, in order for the truth of how things were done in the apartheid system to be fully known.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I am sure, could be a guide in how that worked and how it helped, hopefully, to resolve past hurts and damage done to people under that system.