""He will do everything he can. I'm not going to say anything yet, but what a lovely man, what an experience. I'll never forget it. "His sincerity, his empathy. He felt my pain, but he hasn't experienced my pain; he knows what pain I had gone through and my family. "It made my day, and I'm so glad I did it, and I think Mark would be happy. And he gave a blessing to Mark's photograph that I had,""
""He said he was so sorry to hear of my pain, for my family's pain, and for the other survivors that haven't come forward yet. "And he said, for me speaking to him today, hopefully that some other people will come forward and speak about it,""
Pope Leo met privately for about 45 minutes with David Ryan, a 62-year-old survivor of clerical sexual abuse from Tipperary. The pope apologised to Ryan for what he had gone through and expressed empathy. Ryan brought a photograph of his brother Mark, also an abuse survivor who died in 2023; the pope blessed the photograph. They discussed abuse in the 1970s at Blackrock College in Dublin, and Ryan posed several questions which the pope listened to at length. The pope urged that more survivors come forward and offered condolences to affected families.
Read at Irish Independent
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]