Leading up to the trial, the news papers and TV were full of the Pope’s visit to UK.  For weeks and weeks they kept on about the visit.  I joined a campaign to ban the Pope’s visit.  But no, Tony Blair got his way, he got his visit from the Pope.  Let’s face it; he needs, what is it? absolution for his war crimes.  Through the news channels there was no news in the world, only this visit, of the Pope.  I watched him in Scotland, in London and, on the last day, I watched him in Oscott College, Sutton Coldfield.  Yes the very same college that Robinson went to.  The very same college that Robinson took his victims to, to be abused or should I say raped.

On the last day, (Sunday) he was in the college to perform the beatification of Cardinal Newman.  There sat on the Pope’s left hand Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, the very man that allowed my abuser, freedom in USA.  Not only that, but paid him £200 per week for nine years, whilst he was on the run from the Police (whilst Nichols was Bishop of Birmingham).  But don’t forget, Robinson had his wages as a priest from the California church.  I watched in total disgust; the very head of a church, the Pope, who reigns over an evil empire of abuse, not only here in Europe, but in the Third World.  What is happening here now is nothing to what is happening inSouth America.  Shame on the lot of them.  I watched various interviews on TV with Vincent Nichols and I was getting angrier by the day.  He has no compassion, no understanding of the suffering that we all go through.  I sincerely would like to meet him, face to face, to ask why he did nothing to help me or the other victims.  But it will never happen, so on we go.

I left these thoughts out of my first writings for the simple reason that I wanted to try and keep my abuse, my story, away from a purely Catholic Church bashing exercise.  I have an immense amount of sympathy for all the priests who do an excellent job looking after the needs of the parishioners.  But I also am totally against the church as it is here today.  A church that has shown, over many generations, to have lacked the basic Christianity that it preaches.  A church that is only interested in keeping its cash, keeping its independence and its business interests together, and secret.

Having completed my story, I find that I am now looking back at the last two years.  I have seen despair, anger, frustration, more anger.  I have always had a fear of The Catholic Church, of priests, of the very Organisation that encouraged my and my fellow victims’ abuse.  I say encouraged, as that is the way it appears to me.  Any outfit that allows its ordained members to behave in such an evil manner is, in my humble opinion, evil.  There again I say ordained.  Robinson was in year 4 of a 6 year course when I had the misfortune of making his acquaintance.  The very fact that at the trial it was read out in court, that it took him 13 years to be ordained tells me many things.  I was, in fact, abused by a trainee, not yet a priest.  Yet he was expelled from his seminary in London for making sexual advances to the nuns.  It is apparent that the church let him back in a number of times.

I remember sitting in my cottage, back in 1995, watching “The Late Late Show” with Gaye Byrne, on RTE 1 television.  On this particular Friday night one of the guests was Cardinal Cahil Daly.  During the interview Gaye Byrne asked Daly, “were you aware of the child abuse going on with regard to Fr Brendan Smyth?”  He without hesitation replied, “yes.”  I was shocked.  The audience was taken aback and they made a gasping sound.  Gaye asked the same question again, this time instructing the Cardinal, “to think hard about the answer.”  He replied immediately, “yes.”  That night the Catholic Church, lost all credibility and still does to this day.

I have witnessed the Ryan, Murphy and now Cloyne Reports and I am still shocked not only by the church’s guilt, but by the way they treat the victims.  Their Christianity has no beginning.  Surely this has to change?  Last week I wrote a letter to The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, pledging my support for his efforts.  He is a very brave man to be taking the brunt of the public anger at what has gone on.  Yes a truly brave man.  Credit where credit is due.  This is the only man who seems to give anyone “hope for the future of the church in Ireland.”  I can see it, and I’m an atheist.