DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Reuters
August 20, 2018
By Padraic Halpin
Andrew Madden became the first victim of clerical child sex abuse in Ireland to speak out publicly in 1995 when he detailed how, as a 12-year-old altar boy, he suffered two-and-a-half years of abuse at the hands of his parish priest.
Over the next 15 years floods of similar stories followed as harrowing state investigations unearthed endemic sexual abuse and cover-up that rocked the church’s standing in the once staunchly Roman Catholic country.
When Pope Francis makes the first papal visit to Ireland in nearly 40 years this weekend, Madden, a Dubliner, will be a long way away.
“I did not want to be here and watch a load of people flag-waving after all this church has done. To see that institution being cheered on when there are so many unanswered questions, I would find it sickening,” said Madden, who will be in Rome when the Pope addresses an expected 500,000 people in Dublin on Sunday.
“I don’t have any expectations of the pope telling the truth about what the Vatican knew and its knowledge of all that was covered up. It has had plenty of time to respond appropriately to what’s happened in this country and elsewhere.”
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