ROME
Crux
August 28, 2018
By Inés San Martín
In the run-up to Pope Francis’s intense 32-hour visit to Ireland, the question was if a trip so short could have an impact on the mounting storm of clerical sexual abuse, both in the past two decades and in the past two weeks.
As he has before, Francis had to walk a tight rope – not because of the fear of repercussions for a community facing genocide, for instance, as in Myanmar – but because of the long history of pain caused by the Church in Ireland, the wounds of which were ripped open just before the pope arrived by revelations from Chile, the United States, and elsewhere.
Francis, however, also could not ignore the main thrust of his pastoral visit to the Emerald Isle: The Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families, which brought together thousands of families from over 100 countries. They too wanted to hear from the pope, and not exclusively about abuse and the Church’s response, but about family life and the challenges young couples face today.
Francis’s visit to Ireland was, in a way, two trips rolled into one, and the tone of his words and the reception he received demonstrated this, both at the events and in the streets: Thousands cheered him in a stadium on Saturday, but earlier in the morning the prime minister, Ireland’s first openly gay leader, didn’t shy away from listing the Church’s failures.
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