Dear Pope Francis: ‘A year after John Paul II came, I was raped by a priest’

Dear Pope Francis: ‘A year after John Paul II came, I was raped by a priest’

We invite a range of people to write the Pope an open letter in advance of his Irish visit

Colm O'Gorman

Executive director, Amnesty International Ireland

Dear Francis,

I won’t lie. It has been a tough few months. I hadn’t imagined that your visit to Ireland would cause me any upset, but to my surprise it has.
It started when the media here began to recall the iconic moments of John Paul II’s visit back in 1979. I was 13 years old then and, like most children of my generation, heavily involved in the church. I had been an altar server; I sang at Mass every Sunday.
I went to a Christian Brothers School and the youth group I attended every week was a Catholic group that met in a convent. The church was a massive influence in my life back then, and central to every part of it.
I didn’t get to see Pope John Paul II when he was here. My older sister and brother did, and I remember envying them as I watched the visit unfold on TV. The ecstatic crowds that lined the streets everywhere the Pope went, him beaming from his Popemobile and blessing the crowds as he wove his way though them, and above all that moment in Galway when he looked out across 300,000 young people and proclaimed in his accented, booming voice, “Young people of Ireland, I love you!”

Colm O’Gorman. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
My heart nearly burst when I heard him say that. It was a time when people didn’t often tell us that we were loved, not in that way, and I believed him. I believed every word he said.
It’s different now, though. Now when I hear that same voice say those same words I don’t feel that joy. Instead I feel terribly sad. Sad for that 13-year-old me, heartbroken and sick for him.
You see, just over a year after that, I was raped for the first time by a priest. A priest who used my blind faith in the goodness of your institution to get into my home, take me away and repeatedly assault me.

That priest had been ordained just four months before the visit, and your church knew then that he was a child abuser. He had sexually assaulted a group of boy scouts while a seminarian. The scouting association had barred him for life as a result, but your church made him a priest and then sent him off and let him abuse for years with impunity.
He made it along to the papal visit. He was in the Phoenix Park for the Mass, at the Papal Cross beneath which you will celebrate Mass when you arrive here soon. After he was ordained he was sent to a parish in Belfast, where he immediately began to cause havoc. He worked his way around the ban from the boy scouts by founding a troop of his own. I was told he had some of them with him at that Mass in 1979. I wonder if those boys were abused during that trip?
The impact of what he did to me nearly killed me. I won’t go into the detail now, but it led to me fleeing my home when it finally ended almost three years later because I was so broken that I was finding it difficult to stay alive. If I hadn’t run, I don’t think I would have survived. I spent six months on the street, and was estranged from my family for nearly four years as a result of it all.
That, perhaps, is worth thinking of in the context of your trip here for the World Meeting of Families: those of us who were abused by the church have families, and they suffered alongside us. Many are still suffering.
Many will watch your visit and remember 1979, before all of this was revealed and before they came to know about and understand the trauma their children suffered. Some will watch it and be reminded of the loss of their children because some of us haven’t survived, some of us couldn’t cope. Some of us died because we saw no way out of the agony of living with what was done to us.
Those families matter too. They may not be there waving flags as you drive by, but shouldn’t you reach out to them at long last and do them the respect of finally telling the truth?
My own family were a big part of me finding the strength to come forward and report the abuse in 1995. What was done to me was tough for them to bear. My Dad in particular was shattered by it. He was a massive support to me, and his love and concern for me was just incredible back then.
Dad died later that same year, but he has always been part of this journey for me. He taught me that the truth matters, that integrity and the courage to stand for what I believe in matters. So, 23 years later, I still stand for truth. I think it’s time that you did the same.
Some people will tell you that you need to do this to save the church from further collapse. That may be true, but I hope you will finally do so not to save the institution, but because it is quite simply the right thing to do. Tell the truth. Admit the cover-up. Please.