Decision on apostolic visit next month

DETAILED PLANS for the forthcoming apostolic visitation in Ireland are due to be decided at a Vatican meeting next month.

Senior Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said the designated visitors and the relevant Vatican congregations are due to meet in the Holy See next month to finalise and co-ordinate the visitation, which is expected to start shortly afterwards.

Announced by Pope Benedict XVI in his March pastoral letter to the Irish faithful, the visitation is intended to “offer assistance” to Irish bishops and priests as they “seek to respond adequately to the situation caused by the tragic cases of abuse perpetrated by priests and religious upon minors”.

The visitation is expected to take the form of an in-depth fact-finding mission in which visitors are likely to trawl through much of the ground already covered last year by the Murphy and Ryan reports.

Asked if this was not unnecessarily repetitive, one senior Vatican figure involved in the organisation of the visitation said the Holy See “wants to ask its own questions, in its own time”, notwithstanding the conclusions already arrived at by the two public inquiries.

The visitation will comprise nine bishops, priests and religious who are due to visit the four metropolitan archdioceses of Ireland (Armagh, Dublin, Cashel and Emly, and Tuam) and “some other dioceses”.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, will conduct the visit to Armagh, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston will visit Dublin, Toronto’s Archbishop Christopher Collins visits Cashel and Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast will visit Tuam. 

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York will head the visit to Irish seminaries.

SIC: IT/IE