IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Jan. 12, 2012
By Thomas P. Doyle

APPRECIATION

Mary Raftery, an Irish journalist whose documentary series States of Fear exposed abuse in Irish Catholic schools, died in Dublin on Monday. She was 54.

Mary was a journalist by profession, but by vocation, she was a deeply honest and compassionate woman who fearlessly challenged the Irish Catholic Church, and in doing so, made the present and the future a safer place for children.

Mary may not be as well-known in the United States as she is in her native Ireland, yet her life has made a profound difference for victims of clergy abuse everywhere. She did more than any one person to force the systemic vicious abuse in the Irish industrial schools into the open. She continued with her passion to help victims with her documentary Cardinal Secrets, an expose of the cover-up of sexual…