Papal visits are worlds apart for Bishop of Galway

Bishop of Galway, Brendan Kelly remembers vividly the visit of Pope John Paul to Galway.

The Derrybrien native was eight years ordained in 1979, and a teacher at Coláiste Éinde in Salthill, and even though he was concelebrating the mass at Ballybrit, the 72-years-old recalled being almost a mile back from the altar.

“It was a long way away in the distance. I remember vaguely what was happening on the stage, but you couldn’t see it well. What I really remember is the walk to Ballybrit from Coláiste Éinde. I don’t know how many miles it was but people were outside their houses, and there was an incredible atmosphere of joy and fellowship and friendliness. I’ll never forget that,” he said.

The latest visit of a Pontiff to Ireland this week will be different. For one, Bishop Kelly will meet Pope Francis in person both in Knock and with all other Bishops after the papal mass at Phoenix Park, which closes the World Meeting of Families 2018.

Times have changed, too. “It’s a different time, a different place, we’ve had a lot of challenges in the meantime. A lot of struggle,” he said.

“That was the time of the Vatican Council, and when I became a priest we were sure we had a new Church, we were better than what came before us. That was a little bit of the idealism of youth and cockiness of youth. My experience of the priesthood is that every year the challenge has gotten greater, but I have liked it all the more for that.”

Bishop Kelly said World Meeting of Families, “is about marriage and the family as we see it, following the teaching of Jesus Christ and the long tradition of the Church.”

“It’s about strengthening families at a time when family is under pressure,” he said.

But not all families conform to Bishop Kelly’s and the Catholic Church’s narrow view of family.

“The Pope’s attitude, and I think it’s the correct one, is you accept families as they are, even if they disagree with you or if you don’t particularly agree,” he said.

“I would prefer to see a child have a father and a mother and I think this is what the Church would propose as the optimum atmosphere in which to bring up little boys and girls.”

Single parents and people in second relationships should be supported, he said. “It’s not our job to reject them,” said Bishop Kelly.

“How do we live with people who don’t live quite the way we’d like them to live or that we think would be the best way to live? There’s no family perfect anyway, that’s the reality, every family struggles. The integration of people, for example, in same sex relationships, this is a huge question.

“We absolutely believe that God loves every single person, that’s absolutely true and it’s fundamental to the question of faith. Every single person is loved as they are, by God, and is called by God as a human person to live a life of love in that self-giving sense.”

At times, in families, there can be breakage, he said, and the “the hurt can be so deep sometimes”.

“That’s what has come up with all the abuse thing arising again. A lot of people were hurt in the family of the Church, because that’s’ what the Church is, a family of families and that’s what it’s celebrating at the World Meeting of Families. But all these people that suffered within that family of the Church, this is very hard for them,” he said.

Asked what he would say to those people who suffered abuse at the hands of priests and the Church, Bishop Kelly said: “What I would say to them is, ‘I want to hear your story, I want to hear what you have to say, I want to walk with you. I’m sorry that I haven’t listened to you better.’ The Pope himself said there are three things that are so important in a family: ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’. The ‘I’m sorry’ is so hard to say sometimes.”

He added: “I can understand they (abuse survivors) want something concrete” and that the Pope “will say more” on the subject during his visit.

“I do think at the moment what they’re talking about particularly is ‘What do you do with Bishops who have covered up (abuse) and should there not be stricter rules and regulations with regard to that and what would happen to them. I think that’s a fair enough question. That we want to know, if a Bishop is found to have been wanting, what has the Church to say about that.

“A lot of Bishops have resigned over the years but people think that that might not be enough and the rules are somehow not strong enough. They’re also saying, ‘was the Vatican itself, were there people in the Vatican, officials, who didn’t help the whole business of revealing the cover-up or accepting what was going on. We tend to be defensive very quickly. But there can be no defence or defensiveness when it comes to the abuse of children, or the suffering of children, especially the sexual abuse. The sexual abuse leaves an incredible wound.”

Bishop Kelly said abuse is not just an issue for the Church and children have “suffered grievously within ordinary families.”

“One of the wonderful things that has happened in my experience over the years since I’ve been a priest is that all of this has emerged because it was hidden, there was a silence around it, incredible silence, and that silence supported the kind of silence that the abuser very often imposes on the child whom he or she abuses because they’re terrified to say it to anybody. So, if society or the Church is silent about it, too, then that affirms to the child that he or she can’t speak.”

Bishop Kelly said it was “very significant” Pope Francis was going to Knock “because he’s putting prayer at the heart of the World Meeting of Families and of his visit to Ireland.”

“He’s going specifically to a shrine of Our Lady. It’s an enormous amount of trouble and expense, if you like, for a very short visit, but it’s about the centrality of prayer and silence, because he’s going to pray in silence in Knock for the success of the World Meeting of Families and I think that’s very significant because he’s saying something to us about ‘stop, reflect, take time out, think about the deeper questions in life. Where am I coming from, where am I going, can I do better, how do I love?’”

Bishop Kelly said the Pope’s visit can bring hope. “I’d like people to have an experience of a moment of good news and affirmation then I think that changes us and fills us with hope because so many things take away your hope,” he added.

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