IRELAND
Yahoo News UK
August 27, 2018
Christopher Lamb watches a new Ireland try to come to terms with a Church beset by a child abuse scandal
Rising at the crack of dawn and braving pelting rain and driving winds, Irish Catholics made their way for a Mass with Pope Francis in Dublin on Sunday.
The hundreds of thousands of believers who turned out in Phoenix Park must have felt disconnected from a papal visit that was dominated by the sexual abuse scandal inside the Church.
Francis’ two-day visit to Ireland saw him come face-to-face with the rawness of the abuse crisis in the country that has become the Ground Zero for what is arguably the gravest crisis facing the Church in almost 500 years.
It was striking that when John Paul II visited Ireland 39 years ago, more than a million people turned out in Phoenix Park for the papal mass in what was the biggest gathering of people in Irish history. While organisers predicted 500,000 would attend Francis’ Mass, estimates put it the attendance figure at just 200,000.
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