IRELAND
Irish Times
Mark Vincent Healy
Tue, Aug 5, 2014
There ought to have been a sense of huge importance noted about Pope Francis’s first meeting with six survivors of clerical child sexual abuse in Rome on July 7th last. The survivors came from Ireland, the UK and Germany.
Stories of decades of clerical child sexual abuse and cover up were represented in that moment for those nations. I was especially pleased to meet survivors from the UK and Germany. There was an immediate affinity between us, which I hope to one day harness into a council of survivors to give voice to the many issues of survivors from around the world.
My experience of abuse by members of the Holy Ghost Fathers, or Spiritans, informed my message to the pope. I am pressing the State and the Catholic Church for research into self-harming and suicide and the provision of rescue services and safe spaces.
Marie Kane and I would not have been standing in Rome but for those amazing Irish survivors who led the way, supported by people such as the late Mary Raftery and the late Christine Buckley.
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