IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter
Sarah Mac Donald | Jan. 19, 2016
DUBLIN Irish clerical abuse survivor Marie Collins has said she hopes 2016 will see results from the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, despite the “frustratingly slow” pace of the reforms being developed by it.
Speaking to NCR in a personal capacity, Collins, a member of the commission, admitted that she has found Vatican bureaucracy “very difficult.”
The safeguarding body, which is starting its third year of work, is headed up by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley and holds its next plenary meeting at the beginning of February.
“We do work in our working groups in between these big plenary meetings. A lot of it is done electronically. We’re working all the time. It is busy and quite stressful,” said Collins.
Collins, who brought the priest who abused her as a sick child in a Dublin hospital in the 1960s to justice in 1997, warned that “there is still resistance” within the church to safeguarding protocols and that is why the commission’s work is “essential.”
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