The Pope's special investigator for the Archdiocese of Dublin
Cardinal Sean O'Malley has revealed that he has so far met more than 200
people as part of his work.
Cardinal O'Malley was asked by the Pope last year to carry out the
Apostolic Visitation of Dublin with a view to aiding the renewal of the
Church in the wake of the abuse scandals.
Writing on his blog page, Cardinal O'Malley referred to the recent
Liturgy of Lament and Repentance as ''a very moving experience'' and
''very meaningful for all of those who were a part of it''.
On his recent trip to Ireland, the cardinal notes: ''For the rest of
the week, we continued our meetings and interviews with priests, lay
leaders and survivors of sexual abuse. I think by now, over the three visits, we met with more than 200
people,'' he said. ''Now, we will work on preparing our part of the
report that will be presented to the Holy Father. It is important to remember that the visitation is multi-faceted.
Each of the archdioceses is being visited, as are the seminaries, the
religious communities and the institutions they sponsor, and all those
visitors will contribute to the final report,'' he writes.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has also completed
the first phase of his Apostolic Visitation of the seminaries.
During the course of his work he visited the Irish College in Rome,
St Patrick's College, Maynooth, St Malachy's College in Belfast and
Dublin's Milltown Institute and All Hallows College.
According to a communiqué from the Vatican, the visitors are to be
called to Rome shortly to meet with the Curia to discuss the next phase
of their work.
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said that the Vatican would publish a summary of the results of the visitation.