August 29, 2018

Pope Francis visits Ireland for the first time in 39 years

located:	Ireland, Italy
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

Amid the unwinding revelations of the decades-long child sexual abuse and systemic cover-ups from within the Catholic church across a number of nations, including the U.S., Ireland, Argentina and Australia, Pope Francis has travelled to Ireland for the first time in nearly forty years. 

The papal visit was originally set for the 2018 World Meeting of Families, which was chosen by the Pope to take place in Ireland this time around. Yet following a Pennsylvania grand jury naming 300 clergies in a report that found more than 1,000 children had been abused in the state, and with that, a rise of abuse groups speaking up and demanding action be taken, Pope Francis’ visit had inevitably switched direction.

The Pope addressed the global crisis of sexual abuse within the church in the first speech of his two-day visit, saying “we showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them”. It was also reported that the Pope spent time during his visit with abuse survivors in a country, which according to the New York Times, “No nation has been hit harder by the church’s scandals than Ireland.”

Yet despite his acknowledgement of “the abuse of young people by members of the church” and the Catholic church’s repeated and—more crucially—conscious failure to “address these repugnant crimes”, as of yet, no measures have been laid out, a step that victims and advocates have demanded for decades and continue to call for today.

The Pope’s visit to Ireland is the first since 1979, at a time when the country was the bedrock of Catholicism and was responsible for sending out priests the world over. During the last visit, abortion, homosexuality and divorce were all strictly illegal. Today's Ireland however, under Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, is an entirely different landscape; both same-sex marriage and abortion were recently voted for with overwhelmingly positive referendums. And the question on everyone’s minds is, what can the Pope do for a country that has become a blueprint for the church’s heavy wear and tear in the West.