Abuse survivor believes quotes attributed to Pope

Irish News
July 16, 2014

http://www.irishnews.com/news/abuse-survivor-believes-quotes-attributed-to-pope-1367143

 A PROMINENT Irish abuse survivor has said she believes quotes attributed to Pope Francis about the number of paedophile priests in the Church are accurate.

Marie Collins, a member of the Vatican's new child protection commission, was referring to reported comments by the Pontiff in Italian paper La Repubblica that 2 per cent of Catholic clergy - equivalent to one in 50, or nearly 8,000 in total - were child abusers.

The Vatican has disputed the quotes but Ms Collins said she believed the Pope was responsible for the remarks and she could "see a shift" in the Church's approach to the issue under Francis's leadership.

Pope Francis reportedly told veteran journalist Eugenio Scalfari that child abusers within the ranks of the clergy included "priests, and even bishops and cardinals".

"Others, more numerous, know but keep quiet. They punish without giving reason," the Pope is quoted as saying, adding that he found "this state of affairs intolerable".

The Pope is also said to have told the journalist, when the pair met in the Vatican last week, that abuse was like a "leprosy" infecting the Church and he found the estimated 2 per cent figure "deeply concerning".

Mr Scalfari wrote that the Pope had pledged to "confront" paedophilia "with the severity it demands".

The 90-year-old journalist, who has been described as a "self-professed atheist", also suggested that Pope Francis had described mandatory celibacy as a "problem", saying the rule had only been instituted 900 years after the death of Jesus.

"There is definitely a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them," Pope Francis is quoted as saying.

However, senior Vatican spokesman Fr Frederico Lombardi quickly moved to insist that any reference to cardinals being among the ranks of paedophile priests was "not attributable to the Pope".

He said that while Mr Scalfari had "captured the spirit" of his "conversation" with the Pope it had not been electronically recorded and that the quotes had come from the journalist's own memory.

Fr Lombardi compared the controversy prompted by Sunday's article to a previous exchange between Pope Francis and Mr Scalfari on Church issues.

He was referring to an article in La Repubblica in October where the Vatican had questioned the veracity of some quotes attributed to the Pope.

Mr Scalfari later confirmed that he had not taken notes or recorded the interview and conceded that "some of the Pope's words I reported were not shared by Pope Francis".

However, Ms Collins last night said believed the latest comments by the Pope were reliable she and was also certain that he was sincere about his desire to address the global issue of child abuse within the Catholic Church. The campaigner said she could see a change taking place within the Church and its willingness to tackle the scandal.

"I'm not suddenly becoming a Church person who is out there to defend the Church. I want action now as well," she told RTÉ Radio.

"But I do see a shift, and I think if we are going to get change - change that has to happen - we will get it under this Pope. I see a significant difference in the tone of what he says, which is a lot clearer and a lot more forceful than anything we have had in the past."

Ms Collins was sexually assaulted by hospital chaplain Fr Paul McGennis when she was a 13-year-old patient at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin.

During a recent meeting with six abuse survivors in the Vatican, including two Irish people, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness "for the sins of omission on the part of Church leaders who did not respond adequately" to allegations made against priests.

* CAMPAIGNER: Institutional abuse survivor Marie Collins. Right, Pope Francis