IRELAND
Bloomberg
By Colm Heatley – Mar 19, 2013
For Irish victims of priestly sexual abuse, Pope Francis needs to disclose what the Vatican knows about the crimes — and fully apologize for them.
“He could start telling the truth about the extent of Vatican knowledge,” Andrew Madden, a computer consultant from Dublin who claims priests molested him when he was an altar boy in the 1980s, said by phone. “If an apology was preceded by that level of honesty, that would be very significant.”
As Francis begins his reign as the 266th pope following his inauguration yesterday, he faces a global wave of disgust and mistrust toward the church amid abuse cases from the U.S. to Latin America. The wounds run deep in Ireland, one of Europe’s most Catholic countries, underscoring the challenge the pope faces to reviving a religion eroded by secularism and shaken by scandal.
Priests engaged in “endemic” molestation of children for decades, according to two reports by the Irish government issued since 2009, with prelates usually more interested in avoiding scandal to the church than exposing offenders and protecting children.
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