VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis named eight cardinals from around the globe Saturday to advise him on running the Catholic Church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy, marking his first month as pope with a major initiative to reflect the universal nature of the church in key governing decisions.
The advisory panel includes only one current Vatican official. The rest are cardinals from North, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. Many have been outspoken in calling for a shake-up of the Vatican bureaucracy, which was last reformed 25 years ago, while others have tried to clean up the church from sexually abusive priests.
In the run-up to the conclave that elected Francis the first Latin American pope one month ago, many cardinals demanded the Vatican be more responsive to their needs on the ground and said the Holy See bureaucracy itself must be overhauled. Including representatives from each continent in a permanent advisory panel to the pope would seem to go a long way toward answering those calls.
In its announcement Saturday, the Vatican said Francis got the idea to form the advisory body from the pre-conclave meetings where such complaints were aired. “He has formed a group of cardinals to advise him in the governing of the universal church and to study a revision of the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia,” the statement said.
Pope John Paul II issued Pastor Bonus in 1988, and it functions effectively as the blueprint for the administration of the Holy See, known as the Roman Curia, and the Vatican City State. The document metes out the work and jurisdictions of the congregations, pontifical councils and other offices that make up the governance of the Catholic Church.
The church is growing and counts most of the world’s Catholics in the southern hemisphere, while it’s shrinking in Europe. Yet the Vatican and the 200-strong College of Cardinals, traditionally the pope’s primary advisers, remain heavily European.
Lombardi said the fact that Francis selected cardinals from every continent indicated he wanted to reflect the universal nature of the church in Vatican decision-making.
“The Roman Curia retains all its fundamental functions helping the pope in the daily governance of the universal church,” Lombardi told Vatican Radio. “The naming of this group adds to this, in a certain sense integrates it, with a universal point of view and voices from different parts of the world.”
The members of the panel include Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Vatican city state administration — a key position that oversees, among other things, the Vatican’s profit-making museums. The non-Vatican officials include Cardinals Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa, the retired archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, India; Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo; Sean Patrick O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston; George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, Australia; and Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, who will serve as coordinator.
Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, bishop of Albano, Italy will be the panel secretary.
O’Malley, a Capuchin friar, has spent his career cleaning up churches from sexually abusive priests. Pell was outspoken in the run-up to the conclave about the need for reform in the bureaucracy. Maradiaga heads the church’s Caritas International charity federation and is a rare moderate in the College of Cardinals who hasn’t shied from criticizing the failings of the curia.
In theory, all popes have cardinals at their disposal to serve as advisers; advising the pope is a cardinal’s main job aside from voting in conclaves. But neither John Paul nor Benedict made frequent use of their cardinal advisers, in part because they were so far away and numbered more than 200.
With such a small group of men hand-picked by the pope to specifically advise him in running the church and reforming the Vatican, it appears Francis wants a more collegial type of governance for his papacy. That also would meld with his reluctance to call himself pope in favor of his other main title, bishop of Rome.
Some cardinals said they wanted term limits on Vatican jobs to prevent priests from becoming career bureaucrats. They wanted consolidated financial reports to remove the cloak of secrecy from the Vatican’s murky finances. And they wanted regular Cabinet meetings where department heads actually talk to one another to make the Vatican a help to the church’s evangelizing mission, not a hindrance.
They also said they wanted the Vatican to serve the bishops in the field, and not the other way around.
“It just doesn’t work either very quickly or very efficiently,” U.S. Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said in an interview soon after Francis was elected. “Take marriage cases: People shouldn’t have to be asked to wait three, four, five, six years to get a response” for a request for an annulment.
Aside from Saturday’s announcement, Francis has made one Vatican appointment so far, naming a member of his namesake Franciscan order to the important No. 2 spot at the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders.
His most eagerly-watched appointment has yet to come: that of the Vatican secretary of state, who runs the day-to-day administration of the Holy See. Currently, the position is held by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a 78-year-old canon lawyer whose administrative shortcomings have been blamed for many of the Vatican’s current problems today.
“Sometimes in the past the curia has been an example of what not to do, instead of what to do,” Dolan said in an interview after Francis’ installation. “We need to look to the Holy See and the Roman Curia as a model of good governance, of honesty, of simplicity, of frugality, of transparency, of candor, of raw Gospel service, of a lack of careerism, of people who are driven by virtue.”
Dolan suggested that one crucial area of reform would be imposing term limits on Vatican bureaucrats to prevent them from becoming lifers. He said there was also no reason why more laymen and women couldn’t be brought into the Vatican bureaucracy, and that the administration itself could shrink.
CORRECTION: Last non-European Pope was Pope Gregory III, 731-741. [Syria]
VATICAN CITY — The day so anxiously awaited by Roman Catholics and curiously anticipated by many others, arrived on Tuesday, when cardinals of the Church plan to lock themselves in the Sistine Chapel and begin writing names on rectangular pieces of paper to elect the next pope.
The cardinals were celebrating a special Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning, dedicated to the conclave, as the election is called. At 4:30 p.m., they hold their procession into the chapel, where they will swear an oath of secrecy and obedience to the constitution on papal transition. After the words “extra omnes” – everyone out – the princes of the church will get down to business.
Only one round of balloting is provided for on the first day of a conclave, although Vatican officials explained that a vote is not guaranteed – the cardinals can decide not to – but likely. One thing is very predictable: that no one of the 115 cardinals present will receive 77 votes, or the required two-thirds, to become pope on that first ballot.
Candidates will build up blocks of votes over succeeding rounds. Two are scheduled in the morning and two in the afternoon each successive day.
The ballots and notes will be burned in a special oven set up in the Sistine Chapel, with chemicals added to produce black or white smoke. White means the world has a pope, black that no result is reached. Black smoke on Tuesday is expected to arrive toward the evening.
h/t: NYT
Rumors about the ultra-secret voting for the next pope held at the Sistine Chapel next week have included stories about fierce competition between Italian and non-Italian cardinals, leaks about cardinals who want to dig into classified Vatican dossiers and a rotating list of names of the latest papal candidates du jour.
Is there a consensus among the 115 cardinals who will choose the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics? Perhaps. Will it be an Italian, such as Milan Cardinal Angelo Scola, or a South American, like Brazilian-born Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer? How about an American? Or will the next leader hail from Africa, Asia or Central America?
On Saturday, one of the few sources of official information on the Vatican gave reporters hints about the mood of the cardinals who will start the papal conclave Tuesday afternoon.
There’s “no reason to believe it will take long” to have a new pope, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Fredrico Lombardi said. While he didn’t elaborate, the words suggested a frontrunner or frontrunners had developed and that there could be a pope before Friday. Recent papal elections have not been long; both Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II were elected after two days.
In Saturday’s briefing, Lombardi also denied any “huge discussion” among cardinals about when to start voting for a new pope. Leading up to Friday’s announcement about the start of the conclave, Vatican reporters suggested that Italian cardinals wanted an earlier conclave to have more influence over the votes, leaving cardinals who had traveled to Rome less time to consider the candidates.
The spokesman also detailed the timetable for the voting process. Cardinals drew lots on Saturday for rooms at the Casa Santa Marta, a closely guarded Vatican residence where they’ll stay during the conclave. They’ll move into the building Tuesday morning before the Mass Pro Eligendo Pontifice (“for the Election of the Roman Pontiff”) at 10 a.m. at the Pauline Chapel. The chapel is connected to the Sistine Chapel, to which cardinals will proceed at 4:30 p.m. They will take an oath of secrecy, then anyone not taking part in the conclave will be asked to leave the building.
The cardinals will listen to a meditation by Italian Cardinal Prospero Grech about their responsibilities during the conclave and will vote up to two times. At 7 p.m., they’ll pray and at 7:30 return to the Casa Santa Marta.
Aside from the two votes Monday, there will be four votes per day (one set of two in the morning, another set of two in the afternoon). The new pope needs two-thirds of the vote (77 votes), and if he is elected in just one vote instead of two, white smoke will arise from the Sistine Chapel at 10:30 a.m. or 5:30 p.m., depending whether the vote was in the morning or afternoon. If two votes occur, there will be either white or black smoke at noon and/or 7 p.m.
Black smoke means no pope was elected. Lombardi clarified that the new pope has to accept the position before white smoke is released, and said if smoke is released at night, the Sistine Chapel chimney will be lit up so onlookers can see it.
When a pope is chosen and white smoke rises from the chapel, the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica will ring, as they did in 2005 when Benedict was elected. Lombardi noted it took about 40 minutes between the white smoke and official announcement in 2005.
This year, it will be French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon, who will stand on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to shout “Habemus Papam!” (“We have a new pope!”). He’ll present the new pope, who will be in white papal cassocks (three sizes are kept on reserve) and give his first blessing as pope.
h/t: Huffington Post
Pope Benedict XVI is carrying out his final engagements as head of the Roman Catholic church before flying in a helicopter to a hilltop town where he is expected to spend the next two months.
Benedict has been the leader of the Catholic church for eight years and is the first pope to retire since 1415.
See a gallery of his final audience. Photograph: Franco Origlia/Getty Images
(via viva-moment)
The Vatican has dispelled claims that Pope Benedict XVI’s “Pontifex” Twitter account will be shut down permanently, clarifying that it “will be available for use by the next Pope as he may wish.”
Monsignor Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said Feb. 23 the Twitter account was created for the Pope’s “exclusive use.”
In a statement published by Vatican Radio, he said the account will be inactive during the interim “sede vacante” period between the Feb. 28 resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of a new Pope.
Many media outlets misinterpreted an earlier account from Vatican Radio and reported that the Vatican would be shutting down its ten-week-old effort on the social media site.
The Pope’s most recent Tweet of Feb. 24 alluded to his upcoming resignation and the selection of his successor.
h/t: EWTN News
A 300-page dossier compiled by three cardinals investigating the theft of Vatican documents was reportedly given to the Pope the day he decided to resign. The investigation is said to have uncovered a number of factions within the Vatican of gay men who have engaged in sexual activity with male prostitutes and at organized sex romps.
Pope Benedict’s stunning resignation is being linked to a bombshell report exposing a secret gay conclave at the Vatican being blackmailed over acts of a “worldly nature” with laymen.
The 300-page dossier — compiled by three cardinals investigating the theft of Vatican documents — was given to the Pope on Dec. 17, the same day he decided to resign, an Italian newspaper reported Friday.
Just days after receiving the report, Pope Benedict railed against gay marriage and homosexuality, calling it “the manipulation of nature.”
The probe uncovered a number of factions within the Vatican, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation,” La Repubblica reported, citing passages from the report.
Members of the gay lobby included high-ranking Catholic clergy who organized sex romps at a Rome sauna, a suburban Rome villa and a beauty parlor, according to the report. The group was also known to meet at a university residence used by an Italian archbishop.
Quoting a high-placed Vatican source, La Repubblica revealed members of the gay faction were being subjected to “external influence” or blackmail, from laymen with whom they had relationships of a “worldly nature.”
Male prostitutes — who had pictures of the priests dressed in drag and others performing gay sex acts — were behind the extortion, The Daily Beast reported.
“Everything revolves around the nonobservance of the Sixth and Seventh Commandments,” a source close to the cardinals who prepared the report told La Repubblica.
RELATED: POPE BENEDICT SAYS HE IS RESIGNING ‘FOR THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH’
The Sixth Commandment instructs: “Thou shall not commit adultery” and under Catholic doctrine also forbids homosexuality. The Seventh Commandment declares stealing to be a sin.
The report, which comes in two volumes bound in red covers, is being kept in a safe at the papal apartments. It is to be delivered to the next Pope once he is elected.
It was prepared by Spanish Cardinal Julián Herranz, Slovak Cardinal Jozef Tomko and Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo.
The sleuthing cardinals were ordered by Pope Benedict to conduct a secret investigation into the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal involving the pontiff’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele.
Gabriele was arrested in May for stealing and leaking papal correspondence to the press.
Benedict, 85, publicly announced on Feb. 11 that he is stepping down after heading the Holy See for nearly eight years. He is the first Pope to retire in more than seven centuries.
Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said he would not “confirm or deny” news accounts of the report.
The Pope’s last day on the job is Feb. 28. His successor will be chosen in March by the 116-member College of Cardinals — which includes Timothy Cardinal Dolan, head of the New York Archdiocese.
“I know nothing of the content of the report but whatever it contains it is clear that significant reforms are needed within the Vatican bureaucracy,” said Australia’s George Cardinal Pell.
Journalist David Gibson, who wrote the latest biography on Pope Benedict, said it is a stretch to infer the pontiff’s resignation was prompted by the cardinals’ report. “For one thing, Benedict’s resignation was most certainly the result of numerous factors, mainly revolving around the internal problems of the Vatican, of which sexual shenanigans were likely one — but hardly the only one, or even the principal one,” Gibson wrote in his online blog.
BREAKING: Vatican raises possibility of holding conclave to elect next pope earlier than March 15
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 16, 2013
Since Pope Benedict XVI announced he will resign from the Pontificate at the end of February, speculation has already begun as to who his replacement will be.
The process of electing a new Pope, however, is somewhat complicated – both politically and theologically. Technically speaking, for example, political positioning and specific personal attributes don’t make someone more or less “qualified” to be the Pope – according to Catholic tradition, the Pope is selected through the will of God, not because of any particular trait.
1. The Pope can be almost any Catholic male, but is usually a cardinal. While the Pope does seem to have to be male, Canon law isn’t all that specific about other qualifications. The Pope can actually be a cardinal, a bishop, priest, or even a layman, although any non-cardinal would have to immediately receive an “episcopal consecration” from the Dean of the College of Cardinals before becoming Pope. There is certainly some precedent for non-cardinal Popes (see Pope Urban VI), and there is even speculation that a non-Catholic could hypothetically be elected Pope – provided he converts to Catholicism upon assuming the pontificate, of course. Most of the time, however, Popes are former cardinals – probably because cardinals are the ones who actually get to vote on the new Pope in the first place.
2. Popes are often old, but they’re not that old. The papacy isn’t known for attracting especially youthful individuals, but the system does have a cap: Only cardinals under the age of 80 can vote on the next Pope, and – since most Popes come from this group – it’s unlikely that anyone over 80 will ascend to the Papacy.
3. Popes tend to share many of the same views as their predecessor. Cardinals select the new Pope based on their faith and their personal conscience, but who does the voting matters: Pope Benedict, for instance, has appointed 67 of the 181 Cardinals that will be electing the new Pope. This is a common practice among Popes (John Paul II has appointed two-thirds of the electing Cardinals by the time he passed away), and significantly increases the chances that a new Pope will share many of his predecessor’s views.
4. The Pope is usually fluent in several languages. Catholicism boasts 1.3 billion adherents spread across every country in the world. This means communication (read: translation) is a big challenge for Catholicism, and a big part of Church governance. Not surprisingly, many former Popes were known to be linguistic savants; Pope John Paul II, for instance, was fluent in at least 8 languages, and conversant in several more. By contrast, Cardinal Timothy Dolan – the so-called “American Pope” – appears to only be fluent in English and Italian, although he also claims to be conversational in Spanish.
5. The Pope is typically knowledgeable about – or influential within – places where the Catholic Church is growing. Although the Catholic Church isn’t exactly a model for rapid change, the tradition isn’t oblivious to shifting times: Pope John Paul the II, for instance, was the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years, and came to represent the global broadening of the Catholic tradition. The election of Pope Benedict XVI continued the new trend of non-Italian Popes (he’s German), and it stands to reason that – since the Catholic church is continuing to grow in Latin America and Africa – a new Pope could easily be pulled from one of those areas.
Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation comes with questions about who his successor will be. But before the College of Cardinals votes go up in (black or white) smoke — here’s a crash-course in Catholicism — pope politics edition:
1. Voting Cardinals are sequestered inside the Sistine Chapel during the Papal Conclave, which usually lasts about two days. No phones, email or any other technology is permitted — so the pope won’t be live-tweeting the electoral process.
5. The Cardinals will stay in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a cross between a hotel and a monastery located in Vatican City that the-late Pope John Paul II had built during his papacy.
6. Only Cardinals who are younger than 80-years-old can vote for a new pope. But the 80-and-over crowd can voice their opinions at general congregation meetings.
7. Cardinals’ ballots are burned after each round and smoke rises through the Sistene Chapel. Black smoke means they haven’t reached the minimum two-thirds-plus-one majority needed to elect a pope. White smoke? They’ve got a winner.
8. The Cardinals cast their vote on a ballot that has the Latin words “Eligo in Summum Pontificem” on it. Translation: “I elect as supreme pontiff.”
9. If the College of Cardinals can’t reach a two-thirds-plus-one majority, they can vote to lower the vote to a simple-majority.
10. One of the highest ranking cardinals within the College of Cardinals announces the new Pope on St. Peter’s Basilica’s balcony — and he also announces the Pope’s new name, which the Pope himself chooses and what he will be known as from then forward.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio is planning to firethe assistant principal at Purcell Marian High School for supporting marriage equality. On his personal blog last month, Mike Marosi wrote, “I unabashedly believe that gay people SHOULD be allowed to marry,” supporting his position with his Catholic faith. For that, he was placed on administrative leave on February 4, with the expectation that he would be fired if he didn’t recant the statements, which he has no intentions of doing.
Moroski has acknowledged that he violated the Archdiocese’s social media policy, but he denies that he has violated the terms of his contract, which require that he ”comply with and act consistently in accordance with the stated philosophy and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.” Though he knows the Roman Catholic Church does not approve marriage equality, he argues that speaking his conscience was in line with that obligation.
- Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan
- Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian-born former Archbishop of Quebec
- Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture
- Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, head of the Vatican’s office for the Eastern Catholics
Read up on them: http://usat.ly/YRGu6Y
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said Monday he lacks the strength to fulfill his duties and on Feb. 28 will become the first pontiff in 600 years to resign. The announcement sets the stage for a conclave in March to elect a new leader for world’s 1 billion Catholics.
The 85-year-old pope announced the bombshell in Latin during a meeting of Vatican cardinals, surprising even his closest collaborators, even though Benedict had made clear in the past he would step down if he became too old or infirm to do the job.
Benedict called his choice “a decision of great importance for the life of the church.”
Indeed, the move allows the Vatican to hold a conclave before Easter to elect a new pope, since the traditional mourning time that would follow the death of a pope doesn’t have to be observed.
It will also allow Benedict to hold great sway over the choice of his successor. He has already hand-picked the bulk of the College of Cardinals — the princes of the church who will elect the next pope — to guarantee his conservative legacy and ensure an orthodox future for the church.
There are several papal contenders in the wings, but no obvious front-runner — the same situation when Benedict was elected pontiff in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II.
The Vatican stressed that no specific medical condition prompted Benedict’s decision, but in recent years, the pope has slowed down significantly, cutting back his foreign travel and limiting his audiences. He now goes to and from the altar in St. Peter’s Basilica on a moving platform, to spare him the long walk down the aisle. Occasionally he uses a cane.
His 89-year-old brother, Georg Ratzinger, said doctors had recently advised the pope not to take any more trans-Atlantic trips.
“His age is weighing on him,” Ratzinger told the dpa news agency. “At this age my brother wants more rest.”
Benedict emphasized that carrying out the duties of being pope — the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide — requires “both strength of mind and body.”
Contenders to be his successor include Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican’s office for bishops.
Longshots include Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. Although Dolan is popular and backs the pope’s conservative line, the general thinking is that the Catholic Church doesn’t need a pope from a “superpower.”
Given half of the world’s Catholics live in the global south, there will once again be arguments for a pope to come from the developing world.
Cardinal Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, has impressed many Vatican watchers, but at 56 and having only been named a cardinal last year, he is considered too young.
Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana is one of the highest-ranking African cardinals at the Vatican, currently heading the Vatican’s office for justice and peace, but he’s something of a wild card.
All cardinals under age 80 are allowed to vote in the conclave, the secret meeting held in the Sistine Chapel where cardinals cast ballots to elect a new pope. As per tradition, the ballots are burned after each voting round; black smoke that snakes out of the chimney means no pope has been chosen, while white smoke means a pope has been elected.
The pontiff had been due to attend World Youth Day in July in Rio de Janeiro; by then his successor will have been named and will presumably make the trip.
Benedict himself raised the possibility of resigning if he were simply too old or sick to continue on, when he was interviewed in 2010 for the book “Light of the World.”
“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign,” Benedict said.
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had an intimate view as Pope John Paul II, with whom he had worked closely for nearly a quarter-century, suffered through the debilitating end of his papacy.
The announcement took the Vatican — and the rest of the world — by surprise.
Several cardinals on Monday didn’t even understand what Benedict had said during the consistory, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman said. Others who did were stunned.
“All the cardinals remained shocked and were looking at each other,” said Monsignor Oscar Sanchez of Mexico who was in the room when Benedict made his announcement.
Benedict was born April 16, 1927 in Marktl Am Inn, in Bavaria, but his father, a policeman, moved frequently and the family left when he was 2.
In his memoirs, Benedict dealt what could have been a source of controversy had it been kept secret — that he was enlisted in the Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He said he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood. Two years later he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper. He deserted the German army in April 1945, the waning days of the war.
He called it prophetic that a German followed a Polish pope — with both men coming from such different sides of World War II.
h/t: Yahoo! News
After more than seven decades of exploitation and a 10-year struggle for justice, Ireland on Tuesday admitted its role in the enslavement of thousands of women and girls in the notorious Magdalene Laundry system, but stopped short of issuing a formal apology from the government.
A long-awaited report headed by Senator (Seanadóir) Martin McAleese said there was “significant state involvement” in how the laundries were run – a reversal of the official state line for years, which insisted the institutions were privately controlled and run by nuns.
But the Irish Premier (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny’s failure to give the women and their supporters a full, formal, public apology in the Dáil on Tuesday afternoon has infuriated the victims and their supporters, who said such an approach risked undermining Ireland’s attempt to right a historic wrong. Instead Kenny stated his “regret” about the stigma hanging over the women.
“The stigma that the branding together of all the residents, all 10,000, in the Magdalene Laundries, needs to be removed, and should have been removed long before this,” Kenny said. “And I really am sorry that that never happened, and I regret that it never happened.”
Claire McGetterick of the Justice For Magdalenes group said last night: “Frankly their country has failed them again”.
Labelled the “Maggies”, the women and girls were stripped of their names and dumped in Irish Catholic church-run laundries where nuns treated them as slaves, simply because they were unmarried mothers, orphans or regarded as somehow morally wayward.
Over 74 years, 30,000 women were put to work in de facto detention, mostly in laundries run by nuns. At least 988 of the women who were buried in laundry grounds are thought to have spent most of their lives inside the institutions.
Among the key findings were:
• Over a quarter of the women, at least 2,500, who were held in the Magdalene Laundries for whom records survived were sent in directly by the state.
• The state gave lucrative laundry contracts to these institutions, without complying with Fair Wage Clauses and in the absence of any compliance with Social Insurance obligations.
• The Gardaí pursued and returned girls and women who escaped from the Magdalene institutions.
The report concluded there was no physical or sexual abuse by nuns or others on their charges, some of whom were only girls as young as 12.
Stephen O’Riordain, who made a film about the victims of the laundry system and speaks for Magdalene Survivors Together, said ex-inmates were “completely surprised” by the Taoiseach’s stance in the Dáil. “I don’t think sorry is enough for these women who were seeking a fulsome, public apology. I feel he has let us down as a leader of the country.
Established in 1922, some Magdalene laundries operated as late as 1996. Half of the women incarcerated in these institutions, which washed clothes and linen from major hotel groups and even the Irish armed forces, were under the age of 23.
The Justice for the Magdalenes group said it was time for a compensation scheme to include “the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services. Magdalene survivors have waited too long for justice and this should not be now burdened with a complicated legal process or closed-door policy of compensation.”
The inquiry into the Magdalene scandal was prompted by a report from the UN Committee Against Torture in June 2011. It called for prosecutions where necessary and compensation to surviving women.
