By Genevieve Carbery
Irish Times
February 15, 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0215/1224264467109.html
IRELAND -- ABUSE GROUPS: POPE BENEDICT needs to take firm action, show guidance and indemnify the Irish people, the co-ordinator of the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca) said yesterday.
John Kelly was speaking following a meeting of some 200 industrial school survivors, which passed motions urging the Church to set up compensation funds for survivors of the events outlined in the Murphy report and the victims of the Magdalene laundries.
The survivors had written to the pontiff asking him to restore the true Church and honour to the Irish nation for the atrocities committed, he said.
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| John Kelly (left) addresses a meeting of the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca) at Liberty Hall, Dublin, yesterday, with Anthony O'Farrell (seated right). Photo by Dara Mac Donaill |
The Vatican should underwrite the properties that the religious orders handed over to the Government as it could eventually turn them into a cash fund, Mr Kelly said. "The bulk of the properties are tied up in a trust and are of no value to victims of institutions," he said.
A motion that any financial contributions offered by the religious orders and the Church should be used to set up a fund for survivors, not a trust, was passed enthusiastically by the meeting.
"We want reparations given directly to survivors so they can look after their own families," said Chris Heaphy of Right of Place.
Irish Soca will go back to the Government with its mandate to have these properties liquidated and the money paid directly to victims, Mr Kelly said.
The meeting voted to have a monument to survivors, which was recommended by the Ryan report, put aside until substantial progress was made on additional contributions by religious orders.
"I do not want a monument anywhere in Ireland. I want nothing to remind me of what happened," Michael O'Brien of Right to Peace told the meeting.
"If we get a memorial now, then people will say that we got what we wanted," Mr Kelly said.
He added that the Church should take action using the papal court where the Irish State had exhausted all legal actions.
Separately, survivors of clerical abuse urged Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin to convey their views to Pope Benedict during the meeting in Rome between the Irish bishops and the pope.
Andrew Madden and survivors of clerical abuse, as well as clients of One in Four and its director Maeve Lewis, met Archbishop Martin ahead of the meeting.
They asked him to convey the ongoing suffering of victims to the pontiff.
They wanted the pope to fully and unconditionally accept the findings of the Murphy report that abuse was covered in the Dublin diocese.
They reiterated that the pope should remove Bishop Drennan of Galway and accept the resignations of bishops Moriarty, Walsh and Field. Any bishop who did not challenge the cover-up culture should resign, they said.
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