VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI met with Ireland’s two leading bishops on Friday (June 5), who briefed him on a recent report on abuse of children in Irish Catholic schools.
Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin met with the pope on Friday afternoon.
The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi gave no details of the meeting, but told the Associated Press that Benedict expressed his “closeness” to the victims and assured his prayers for the church in Ireland.
The 2,600-page report, released last month, describes sexual and violent crimes committed against thousands of young Catholics who lived in residential schools run by religious orders between 1930 and 1990. One order, the Christian Brothers, successfully sued to keep the names of its members out of the report.
Compiled by Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, the five-volume report cited “a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment” that “permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.”
A number of victims in Ireland have said the report is not complete without the names, and that the matter should not be closed until perpetrators are punished for their crimes.