IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel O’Connell

Monday June 11 2012

THE country’s second most senior cleric, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, has insisted the Catholic Church is on a path of renewal but admitted it would be a “lengthy journey”.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the 50th Eucharistic Congress at the RDS in Dublin, Dr Martin said the past 50 years of the Irish Catholic Church had been marked by a “darker side”.

Remembering “all those who suffered abuse and who still today bear the mark of that abuse”, Dr Martin said that the church had engaged in “criminal abuse and neglect of those weakest in our society”.

Children, who should have been the “object of the greatest care, the greatest support and Christ-like love”, he said, had suffered.