IRELAND
The Southern Star
Monday, 13th March, 2017
Story by Jackie Keogh
A WEST Cork priest was applauded for a sermon he gave on Sunday, castigating the church for its failure to safeguard the innocent, follwing the Tuam babies revelations.
Fr Ger Galvin’s sermon at the Sacred Heart Church in Durrus resonated with parishioners who were horrified by the revelations that an estimated 796 bodies were discarded in a sewerage system in Tuam.
Fr Galvin told The Southern Star: ‘It began with Pope Francis asking for a day of prayer on Friday, March 3rd, for victims of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. I decided to move it to Sunday so that the whole community would have an opportunity to remember and pray for victims, their families, and the families of the perpetrators.’
However, on Friday, the initial findings of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Commission were made known and Fr Galvin said he was ‘sickened’ by what he heard. And his sermon on Sunday reflected that. When he was ordained in 1979, Fr Galvin said: ‘I assumed that I was becoming a priest in an institution that would be guided always by the words and the life of Jesus, but I have since discovered that that was a rose-tinted illusion.’
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