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| Taoiseach Leo Varadakar welcomes Pope Francis ahead of his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire |
He started the speech by acknowledging the good that the Catholic Church did in Ireland - schools, hospitals, welfare - filling the holes in what the State provided to the people after independence, although he politely sidestepped the fact that the Church clung tenaciously to their control of these institutions and resisted any state involvement, which is why those 'holes' existed in the first place.
According to the transcript of his speech in the Indepenent.ie, reproduced in full below, he then reminded the Pope that the State had now taken on those functions because Ireland is a different place and a different society to that at its founding in 1922.
Holy Father, on behalf of the Irish people, I want to greet you using one of the oldest blessings we use to welcome a special guest to Ireland - cead mile failte - one hundred thousand welcomes.
And, given the hundreds of thousands of people who will come out to see you, to hear you say Mass, and to receive your blessing, I can think of no welcome more appropriate.
I know you spent a few weeks in Dublin in 1980 at the Jesuit centre in Milltown Park learning English, so we are delighted to welcome you back to Ireland. 1980 was a year after the visit of Pope John Paul II and we are so grateful that his prayers for peace on our island were eventually answered through the Good Friday Agreement. A peace we will protect and nurture.
Today I am privileged to welcome representatives from all communities in Northern Ireland and from Britain here today. Together we are guided by your words: "Make bridges, not walls, because walls fall."
We are also joined here today by people from all walks of life, members of government and frontline public servants, those born here and those who have chosen to come here, men and women, young and old, Catholics, as well as members of other faiths and none.
We all share a common home - and it is our duty to nurture this planet and look after its people.
Holy Father, we thank you for your care for the Earth, for emphasising the urgent challenge of climate change, and for reminding us of our responsibilities. We thank you for the empathy you have shown for the poor, for migrants, and for refugees.
Although you are here principally for a pastoral visit in the form of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, we are grateful that you have found time to do other things, including this event in Dublin Castle, a visit to our President, and mass in the Phoenix Park.
We are also delighted that you are taking time to visit the shrine at Knock, and we hope that, during a future visit, it will be possible for you to travel to Northern Ireland.
Is de bharr do chuairte, ta go leor againne ag smaoineamh nios faide agus nios doimhne anois ar an gcaidreamh ata idir Eirinn agus an Eaglais Chaitliceach Romanach… creideamh a thugadh go hEirinn na ceadta bliain o shin.
Sa seu haois, thug file, scolaire agus manach darb ainm Columban... no "Saint Columbanus" mar a thugtar air sa Bhearla, teachtaireacht an tsoisceil ar ais chun na Mor-Roinne. Is de thoisc a chuid oibre, tugadh an teideal "an chead Eorpach na hEireann" air agus Naomh-Phatrun doibh siud ata ag iarraidh Eoraip chomhaontaithe a chur i gcrioch.
The Christian faith inspired many of the people, Catholic and Protestant, who led our campaigns for freedom and independence. Indeed both the 1916 Proclamation of Independence and the Constitution invoke God in their opening lines. In more recent years, Christian democracy and Christian ideas also helped to inform and guide the founders of the European Union, inspiring a continent to abandon war in favour of ever closer co-operation.
The Catholic Church has always helped us to understand that we are citizens of a wider world and part of a global family.
Our brave missionary priests and nuns provided an education to many around the world, and helped the sick, the poor and the vulnerable. Today our UN peacekeepers and our international development workers around the world follow in that proud tradition, and charities like Trocaire and Concern help those who suffer from famine today, and also refugees.
People of profound Christian faith provided education to our children when the State did not, in the open air next to hedgerows and in the schools and educational institutions they built. They founded our oldest hospitals, staffed them, and provided welfare for so many of our people.
We think of the many wonderful organisations today who continue that work, like St Vincent de Paul to name just one.
It is easy to forget that the Irish State, founded in 1922, did not set up a Department of Health or a Department of Social Welfare until 1947.
These are now our two largest and best funded government departments accounting for more than half of government spending between them today. Providing healthcare, education and welfare is now considered a core function of our State. When the State was founded, it was not. The Catholic Church filled that gap to the benefit of many generations of our people. We remain profoundly grateful for that contribution.
Even today, as we struggle with a housing shortage and homelessness, Catholic organisations and people inspired by their Catholic faith fill a gap in providing services, for example, through organisations like CrossCare.
Holy Father, during your Papacy, we have all witnessed your compassion for those on the edge of our society, those who have not shared in our relative prosperity, those you [who?] have slipped through the net.
Your visit to the Capuchin Day Centre later today reminds us of work we still have to do to ensure that the promise of the New Testament is fulfilled, that we rejoice with the truth, always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. And never fail.
He then bluntly reminded the Pope of the Church's dark history, of its abuses of those in its care and of the coverups and facilitation of those abuses and tolerance for the abusers in terms which no head of government had ever used to a Pope before and, reading between the lines, accusing Pope Francis of not doing enough to redress the wrongs, not turning words into actions and above all not listening to the victims.
At times in the past we have failed. There are "dark aspects" of the Catholic Church's history, as one of our bishops recently said. We think of the words of the Psalm which tells us that "children are a heritage from the Lord" and we remember the way the failures of both church and State and wider society created a bitter and broken heritage for so many, leaving a legacy of pain and suffering.
It is a history of sorrow and shame.
In place of Christian charity, forgiveness and compassion, far too often there was judgment, severity and cruelty, in particular, towards women and children and those on the margins.
Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools, illegal adoptions and clerical child abuse are stains on our State, our society and also the Catholic Church.
Wounds are still open and there is much to be done to bring about justice and truth and healing for victims and survivors.
Holy Father, I ask that you use your office and influence to ensure this is done here in Ireland and across the world.
In recent weeks, we have all listened to heart-breaking stories from Pennsylvania of brutal crimes perpetrated by people within the Catholic Church, and then obscured to protect the institution at the expense of innocent victims.
It is a story all too tragically familiar here in Ireland.
There can only be zero tolerance for those who abuse innocent children or who facilitate that abuse.
We must now ensure that from words flow actions.
Above all, Holy Father, I ask for you to listen to the victims.
And finally he told the Pope that things would be different from now on. Ireland would make its own decisions and make its own laws as a diverse, inclusive society where people of different faiths and no faiths would enjoy full equality before the law. Ireland aspires to be a kinder, more tolerant and inclusive Ireland that the one the Catholic Church had permitted it to be.
The new Ireland would be an Ireland in which the Church either supported the people in these aspirations or it would continue to become increasingly irrelevant. He invited the Pope to give his blessing to the endeavour; he did not ask his permission.
The Ireland of the 21st Century is a very different place today than it was in the past. Ireland is increasingly diverse.
One in six of us were not born here, and there are more and more people who adhere to other faiths, or who are comfortable in declaring that they subscribe to no organised religion.
We have voted in our parliament and by referendum to modernise our laws - understanding that marriages do not always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many forms including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex parents or parents who are divorced.
Holy Father, I believe that the time has now come for us to build a new relationship between church and State in Ireland - a new covenant for the 21st Century. It is my hope that your visit marks the opening of a new chapter in the relationship between Ireland and the Catholic Church.
Building on our intertwined history, and learning from our shared mistakes, it can be one in which religion is no longer at the centre of our society, but in which it still has an important place.
One with greater diversity and choice when it comes to the patronage of our schools - and where publicly funded hospitals are imbued with a civic and scientific ethos.
Ireland is a different country than it was 39 years ago. Modern Ireland is still a country with faith and spirit and values. Family, community, enterprise, social justice, diversity, openness and internationalism, equality before the law, and individual liberty - these values describe the Republic we aspire to be.
We thank you for your visit, and ask for your prayers as we start on that journey together.
In his reply, Pope Francis could only acknowledge the “repellent crimes” inflicted on young people by the Catholic Church and express his hope that these crimes will serve to emphasise the importance of child protection. He said that:
With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education. The failure of ecclesiastical authorities - bishops, religious superiors, priests and others - adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community.
I myself share those sentiments.
Source: Evening Standard
[...]
It is my hope that the gravity of the abuse scandals, which have cast light on the failings of many, will serve to emphasise the importance of the protection of minors and vulnerable adults on the part of society as a whole.
In this regard, all of us area aware of how urgent it is to provide our young people with wise guidance and sound values on their journey to maturity.
Source: Independent.ie
But, he was unable to resist the temptation to interfere in Irish affairs by linking the concern over the abuse of children by his clerics to the recent referendum on legalising abortion with:
[Has a] materialistic ‘throwaway culture’ [made people] increasingly indifferent to the poor and to the most defenceless members of our human family, including the unborn, deprived of the very right to life?
In contrast to the praise heaped on Varadkar for his speech, the Pope's speech was greeted with incredulity by clerical abuse victims and victim support organizations. According to this report in Independent.ie, abuse survivor Colm O’Gorman described it as an “incredible missed opportunity”. He added:
It is staggering to me that in 2018 we are still asking a Pope to take responsibility, not for his own actions necessarily but for the actions of the institution that he heads. It’s mind-boggling to me that to ask the Pope to tell the damn truth is a radical thing to suggest.
It’s a huge shame. Frankly it’s rather disgraceful. This is about criminality at the highest level within an institution. The Vatican has directed, implemented and instituted a cover of the crimes of clergy, including the rape and abuse of children, of women and vulnerable adults across the world.
When he talks about his sadness and grief at the harm that I and others suffered, what does that mean? I was thought as a toddler by my parents that if I wanted to apologise for something, the first thing I had to do was take responsibility for my own actions.
One protester from Pennsylvania who had travelled to support Irish and Northern Ireland victims said:
So much has been covered up by bishops in the Catholic Church. I was so small when I was abused, not by a member of the Church but it was covered up by the Church. Everyone knew, my mother, the teachers in school, everyone but that was back in the 70s and everyone was so afraid of the Church.
It was important for me and other victims, to be here today, to use Pope Francis' visit as a stage for protest, to force change in the Church - that bishops must no longer be allowed to cover up child abuse.
Ireland has come so far, with the 'Repeal' movement and LGBTI marriage rights and now in Ireland we are going to send a message to the Church together.
Richard Duffy said:
[the Pope is] guilty of crimes and should be held to account. Abuse and the cover-up of crimes is ongoing. There are plenty of people all the way up who deserve to be arrested,” he said, adding that he believed that anyone in the Church from the position of Cardinal up has been involved in some form of cover-up.
It’s those who believe in [the core Catholic message of love and compassion] who are most betrayed by the Vatican.
Minerva Viga from Mexico said:
I’m here because I want to ask the Pope for justice for victims of abuse,” she said. “I’m here because I suffered. I attended a Catholic school in Mexico and the priest used to hit me almost every day. I’m looking for justice for the children who were abused. Today is such a hard day.
It remains to be seen whether Pope Francis will provide actions not just words by ordering his bishops and cardinals to open up their secret files and make the contents available to child protection agencies and law enforcement officials and so finally purge his Church of what he has reportedly described as 'excrement' and whether he will order his clerics to resist the temptation to interfere in the affairs of increasingly secular states so that all people of all faiths and none can enjoy the full human rights his Church has sought to deny them of for centuries.
Can Pope Francis and the Church he leads join the rest of civilisation in the 21st Century or will it continue to act as a brake, trying to hold society back in the Dark Ages when its clerics were immune to criticism, their crimes went unpunished and dissent and disagreement carried a death sentence.
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