Mark Vincent Healy
[email protected] Survivor Campaigner seeking ‘Rescue Services’ and ‘Safe Space Provisioning’ for survivors of clerical child sexual abuse http://www.thejournal.ie/author/mark‐vincent‐healy/ 7th July 2014 RE: Meeting with Pope Francis His Holiness Pope Francis Domus Sanctae Marthae 00120 Vatican City, The Vatican. Your Holiness, I wish to thank you for this opportunity of meeting with you as a survivor of clerical child sexual abuse along with others from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany. The world will indeed be curious about our meeting and wondering what will come of it. There are opposing opinions about such a meeting ranging from high hope on the one hand, to scepticism, if not derision, that nothing positive can possible come of such a meeting. For my part I can only hold out hope. I contacted other survivors and their families to let them know I had been accorded this opportunity. Many do not trust the Catholic Church and for good reason considering the enormous betrayal of trust which was later followed by the enormous distress in seeking remedy and redress. However, I feel any opportunity to dialogue and lay out the realities of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse is not to be squandered. I am not sure I have what it takes to give the sort of presentation this subject requires but I will be happy to have made the effort than to have lost the opportunity in not even trying. THE PROBLEM I have poured over reports, letters, articles and papers attempting to find words appropriate to this occasion which might strike sufficiently loudly on the alarm bell.