LETTER: Parents are more to blame than priests or Pope

SIR – I’m at a loss to fully understand the reasoning for the ferocious campaign against the Pope’s recent visit to this country. 

It’s precisely 39 years this month since John Paul II arrived here to rapturous welcome, yet child abuse was as relevant then as now. 

Have the victims of abuse got enough now? Will they move on and let the Pope do his thing about it? I think they just don’t get it, it’s quite clear that Pope Francis has got it. 

He has made a commitment to repair the damage done, he has made firm and decisive decision to pursue the truth and justice. He sorted out the Vatican Bank when it was widely reportedly that he never would. 

Yes the Church did wrong, but how many more were involved in this whole dreadful circle? 

Never forget you had the State funding the whole operation. Those nuns that worked in those homes and laundries never drew a single penny as it all went to the orders. 

Where are all the lay people, delivery men and women that were constantly in and out of them, did they all suffer visual impairment that they didn’t acknowledge what was happening? They certainly were all involved in the cloak of secrecy and cover up of crime of the highest order.

Where are the priests that were in and out of those places? Why didn’t some one of them speak out? Where were the gardaí in all this?

What about the parents of those young girls who put them into those homes in order to save face and preserve their moral high standing in their local communities?

It was those parents who helped to create this cruel and barbaric part of our history, not the nuns, not the priests who were associated with it. 

Today it is very important for women and girls to speak up about what you see wrong in your world and don’t let this ever happen to women again.  

Always remember that no man, however prominent or powerful, is entitled to defy a Court of Law.

Is it surprising that the country today is riddled with mental illness?

Michael O’Sullivan, 

Cahermore,

Castletownbere.