IRELAND
The Irish Times
August 3, 2018
By Patsy McGarry
Former president urges pope to make Ireland point at which ‘hope and history rhyme’
The abuse scandals in the Catholic Church were now entering “an even more disrupting chapter,” former president Mary McAleese has said.
She quoted veteran Vatican correspondent Robert Mickens as saying that, in order to solve the underlying problem, Pope Francis will “have to devote the rest of his pontificate almost exclusively to this gargantuan endeavour.”
The former editor of UK magazine The Tablet claimed the abuse issue now theatened “to engulf his papacy and do lasting damage to Francis’s own reputation”, Mrs McAleese recalled.
She continued that “the recent and ongoing scandals and the McAreavey, McCarrick and Wilson resignations are signalling that this issue is now entering an even more disturbing and disruptive chapter”.
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