Colm O'Gorman: I admired Pope Francis — but we must be honest about his failings

The Church has covered up abuses for centuries. Our failure to acknowledge that popes colluded in it is part of the problem 

Pope Francis making his way to the altar to celebrate Mass at the Phoenix Park in Dublin in 2018, when he asked for forgiveness for abuses in Ireland — but Colm O’Gorman argues that the cover-up of abuses has always come from the Vatican itself. Picture: Dan Linehan/Irish Examiner Archive

I have come to realise that the greatest barrier to the honest acknowledgement of the scale and deliberate nature of the global cover of clerical sexual abuse is not the struggle to uncover the truth, but rather our collective inability to believe it. 

We know the truth. It is now indisputable that the cover-up of the rape and abuse of hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults by Roman Catholic clergy was mandated and directed by the Vatican at the highest level.