The Archbishop of Armagh said that survivors’ stories of abuse loomed over the 2018 trip and that a year later the pontiff gathered bishops from around the world to ensure safeguarding mechanisms were in place.
The pontiff’s visit to Ireland in 2018, as part of the World Meeting of Families, was overshadowed by Ireland dealing with the legacy of abuse scandals by figures and institutions of the Catholic Church.
His visit prompted several demonstrations, including at a mass grave of infants at a former home for unmarried mothers in Co Galway, and at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.
Along with meeting homeless people at a centre run by the Capuchin Fathers and praying at the Knock shrine in Co Mayo, the Pope met with survivors of clerical abuse.
After meeting with survivors on Saturday evening, he penned a plea for forgiveness that he later delivered during an open-air mass in Phoenix Park.
During that address, he asked for “forgiveness for the abuses in Ireland” and for “pardon for all the abuses committed in various types of institutions”.
Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell said the issue of mother and baby homes was “very much in the fore” at the time.
“A mark of the man, he responded to that very spontaneously at the mass in the Phoenix Park, when he wrote his own penitential right shaped around what he had heard from some people who had found themselves in that home during their life.”
He said he introduced a formal document of the structure for...
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