National Board for Safeguarding Children: Pope ‘dismal’ on child protection

Catholic bishops have made no response to criticisms by the former head of the Church’s child safety watchdog that Pope Francis’ record on child protection “has been a dismal failure”.

National Board for Safeguarding Children: Pope ‘dismal’ on child protection

Catholic bishops have made no response to criticisms by the former head of the Church’s child safety watchdog that Pope Francis’ record on child protection “has been a dismal failure”.

Speaking in an interview with The Irish Times, former chief executive of the Irish Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children Ian Elliott also hit out at Irish bishops saying they had paid “a lot of lip service” to child protection at the beginning of his work in 2007. He said the bishops were also “very resistant” to his work at this time.

I came into the post being told that I would be pushing on an open door. Everybody wanted reform. They recognised there was a problem. They wanted to solve that problem.

"They were committed to solving that problem and they wanted me to come in to lead that process. That proved not to be the case,” he told the Irish Times.

However, Mr Elliott was particularly scathing in his criticism of Pope Francis. He said the Pontiff’s record on child protection “has been a dismal failure” and that he needs to visit Ireland later this month “with a mindset that it’s not good enough to simply apologise for what has happened”.

Mr Elliott, who has worked on child protection with the Catholic Church in other countries around the world since his contract was not renewed by the Irish Catholic Church, said it was clear the church worldwide was failing in the realm of child protection.

“Looking at the evidence across the world the problem is not being managed effectively anywhere by the church. I don’t believe that bishops, the clerical hierarchies, are capable of exercising the sort of judgment that is needed in order to have confidence that the vulnerable will be protected,” he stated.

Mr Elliott said his time working with the Irish Catholic Church was “incredibly challenging” and left him drained. He also said he would not do it again given the resistance he faced.

At the end of the six years I left a lot wiser but I was exhausted, emotionally, every way. I met with a lot of hostility, sometimes it wasn’t even in anyway hidden, completely hostile. I chose to be there, I chose to stay,” he said.

Mr Elliott’s comments are the latest in a series of high profile criticisms of Pope Francis ahead of his visit to Ireland.

Head of Amnesty Ireland Colm O’Gorman is organising a solidarity meeting to be held at the same time as Pope Francis begins Mass in Dublin and criticised the notion that a meeting held between the Pope and survivors would be behind closed doors.

“It would all be very quiet and private and secret. They’d say that the Pope listened carefully to the stories that were told to him. That he was aggrieved and heart-broken and distressed to hear the trauma that people had suffered and that he expressed his sorrow at the actions of some priests and maybe even the failure of some bishops.

“But that is not an appropriate response from an institution that was directly involved in the cover-up of those crimes. That there is ultimate responsibility,” he said.

Survivors and relatives of infants from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home are also planning to hold a vigil to coincide with the Papal mass in the Phoenix Park.

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