IRELAND
France 24
August 25, 2018
Irish victims of child sex abuse by the clergy say Pope Francis will need to come up with more than an apology this weekend if he is to restore faith in a deeply tarnished Catholic Church.
Once a bastion of Catholicism, Ireland has changed dramatically since the last time a pontiff visited back in 1979 – when divorce and contraception were banned, gay marriage was unheard-of, and the Church’s grip on a deeply conservative society was near total.
As Pope Francis arrives Saturday in Dublin for a two-day visit, he’s seeing a country led by a gay prime minister, where same-sex marriage was adopted by popular ballot, and in which a large majority of voters chose to revoke one of the world’s most restrictive abortion regimes earlier this year.
Tellingly, such sweeping social change took place despite stiff opposition from the Church.
The Pope’s visit, timed to coincide with the World Meeting of Families (WMOF), a global Catholic gathering, comes at a critical time for the Church in both Ireland and the wider world, with the Vatican mired in a string of abuse scandals that threaten to reshape Francis’s legacy.
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