Pope Francis has his work cut out to appease the church’s critics

No one on earth could fulfil the expectations that have been invested in the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. He is meant to  respond to the crisis of clerical child abuse and institutional self preservation within the global church during his first official address at Dublin Castle in a fashion that appeases the church’s critics in Ireland, who are, frankly, in no mood to be appeased. What he did do in his speech was express once again perfectly decent sentiments of abhorrence at the violation of children by members of the clergy. It won’t, and couldn’t, satisfy those who wanted him to use this occasion to make quite explicit commitments about mandatory reporting of abuse globally, as required by one of the most vocal of the victims of clerical abuse, Marie Collins, who resigned from the Vatican commission on abuse out of impatience with its slow rate of progress.

But then, his one meeting with officialdom probably wasn’t the place to make concrete policy statements.