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	Church Leaders to Report on Meeting with Pope By Paul Cullen and Patsy McGarry Irish Times June 8, 2009 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0608/1224248284736.html CATHOLIC PRIMATE Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin will today deliver a report on the pope's response to the Ryan report to bishops holding their summer meeting in Maynooth. The two met Pope Benedict on Friday in the Vatican. Earlier last week, they met six members of the curia, including secretary of state Cardinal Bertoni. The bishops, after their meeting on Wednesday, are expected to issue a statement setting out their responses and those of the pope to the Ryan report on the abuse of children in institutions. The Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca) group yesterday welcomed the meeting between the two Irish church leaders and the pope, and expressed its willingness to help the Vatican in any inquiry carried out into the misconduct of religious orders in Ireland or elsewhere. The Dáil was due to begin a debate on the report tomorrow, expected to last two days. However, following Fine Gael's post-election decision to call for a motion of no confidence in the Government, the abuse debate is likely to be delayed until Thursday. Meanwhile, a new umbrella group, Survivors of Institutional Abuse Ireland, is to march from Parnell Square to the Dáil at noon on Wednesday. Described as an act of solidarity with former residents of the institutions, the march will see participants carrying just one banner with the words: "Cherishing the children of the nation equally". The march will proceed in silence. Each person taking part has been requested to wear a while ribbon and bring along a child's shoe. The shoes will be placed at Leinster House, and the white ribbons will be tied to the railings. Four wreaths, two white and two black, will be laid at Leinster House by leaders of groups of former residents, in memory of all who were resident in the institutions, living and dead. A copy of a petition will be handed at Leinster House to Cori secretary general, Sister Marianne O'Connor, and representatives of each of the 18 religious congregations which were party to the 2002 redress agreement with the State. Unions and employers are being asked to allow workers in Dublin an early lunch on Wednesday so they can take part in the march. Meanwhile, Catholic theologian Fr Vincent Twomey has described as "monsters" and the "dregs of society" the religious who abused children in church-run institutions. Speaking yesterday on BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence programme, Fr Twomey praised many other members of religious orders for caring for a country that had been abandoned by government for over 200 years. The former professor of moral theology at the National University of Ireland described his reaction to the Ryan report as one of horror, and said it left him unable to sleep for some nights. Asking how it was possible that religious supposedly devoted to Christ and the care of children turned out to be such "monsters", he suggested part of the problem came from the church's failure to develop a self-critical, thinking Christianity. Irish Catholicism was conformist, parochial and narrow-minded, he said, and it wasn't open to the big questions. The religious were very devotional and emotional, but not generally intellectual. He said "a conformist, externally orientated, ritualistic practice grew up, which didn't touch the heart".
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