IRELAND
Journal

Mark Vincent Healy is a campaigning abuse survivor. Read his full report and response to the NSBCCCI audit into the Holy Ghost Fathers here.

THE FIRST MALE survivor of Irish clerical child sexual abuse to meet with Pope Francis was myself, Mark Vincent Healy. I followed Marie Kane, also from Ireland, as the fourth survivor to meet with Pope Francis. There were six of us presented to Pope Francis from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany.

It was such an important and historic moment for Irish survivors where the Pope was left in no doubt about the human and spiritual cost that clerical child sexual abuse causes. Those costs over decades were in the form of self-harming to suicide to spiritual isolation and what is called ‘soul murder’.
In my letter I personally presented to Pope Francis I wrote:

The world will indeed be curious…