Pope Francis touched down in Dublin on Saturday for an historic two-day visit to Ireland, where the Catholic Church is battling to regain trust following multiple scandals.

His Alitalia “Shepherd One” flight landed under cloudless skies at 10:26am (0926 GMT), where deputy head of government Simon Coveney and his children were waiting to meet him with a bouquet of white and yellow roses with Irish foliage.

Hundreds of thousands of wellwishers and over a 1,000 journalists are expected to follow Francis during his tour of Dublin and County Mayo in the far west of the country.

Francis will tour Dublin on Saturday on his Popemobile before visiting a hostel for homeless families and giving a speech at Croke Park stadium.

The highlight of the visit will be an outdoor mass in the city’s Phoenix Park on Sunday, expected to draw 500,000 people — a tenth of the country’s entire population.

It is the first papal visit to Ireland since Pope John Paul II spoke to a crowd of 1.5 million people there in 1979.

The country has since undergone fundamental social change, becoming more secular — electing a gay prime minister and voting to legalise same-sex marriage and abortion.

The church has also been tarnished by clerical abuse scandals and victims and their supporters will hold a “Stand for Truth” demonstration in Dublin during the Sunday mass.

The Vatican confirmed Francis will meet with victims but provided no details, and said

It also said he was unlikely to announce specific measures to combat sexual abuse within the church following a devastating recent US report that accused more than 300 priests in the state of Pennsylvania of abusing more than 1,000 children since the 1950s.

In Tuam, a town in western Ireland, a silent vigil was planned in solidarity with victims of “mother and baby” homes — institutions accused of being punishment hostels for unwed pregnant women.

He will meet with President Michael D Higgins and Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar.</s>KNOCK, Ireland (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday asked for forgiveness for the “scandal and betrayal” felt by victims of sexual exploitation by Catholic clergy as he continued his tour of Ireland where years of abuse scandals have shattered the Church’s former dominance.

On the first papal visit to Ireland in almost four decades, Francis privately met with eight victims of clerical, religious and institutional abuse on Saturday and said he would seek a greater commitment to eliminating this “scourge”.

But pressure on the pope over the issue increased on Sunday when a former top Vatican official accused Francis of having known of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent U.S. cardinal for five years before accepting his resignation last month.

“None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence and left scarred,” Francis told a crowd of tens of thousands at the Knock shrine in the west of Ireland on Sunday morning.

“This open wound challenges us to be firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice. I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” he said, to applause from the crowd.

Years of sexual abuse scandals have shattered the credibility of the Church which four decades ago dominated Irish society. In the past three years, Irish voters have approved abortion and gay marriage in referendums, defying its wishes.

The dwindling influence of the Catholic Church has been demonstrated by crowds far smaller than those that met Pope John Paul II during the last Papal visit in 1979, when more than three-quarters of Ireland’s population turned out.

Francis, facing sexual abuse crises in several countries, wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics last week asking each one of them to help root out “this culture of death” and vowing there would be no more cover ups.

Some of those who turned out on a misty morning in Knock, where a group of locals in 1879 said they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, said Francis should be given a chance to deal with the abuse issues that have rocked the Church for decades.

“People have to give this man a chance, he’s trying his best,” said Carmel Lane, who travelled from County Longford in the Irish midlands to attend the Mass.

Vatican officials on Sunday declined immediate comment on an 11-page letter given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets in which Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said he had told Francis in 2013 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had faced extensive accusations of sexually abusing lower-ranking seminarians and priests.

McCarrick became the first Cardinal in living memory to resign his position in the Church leadership after a review concluded that allegations he had sexually abused a 16-year-old boy were credible.

McCarrick has said that he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged abuse of the teenager 50 years ago but has not commented on the other allegations.

One survivor of clerical abuse who met the pope on Saturday, Paul Redmond, said strong language used by Francis at the meeting gave him hope that something might be shifting in the Catholic Church.

“There’s been a lot of false dawns, there’s been a lot of empty promises and a lot of talk but maybe, maybe this is the time something, something substantial will actually happen in the Church,” Redmond told Reuters.

But others who took part in sporadic protests around Dublin on Saturday were not convinced.

“I don’t think he should come and expect us to pay for his visit when there are people today in Ireland who are so damaged and need so much help that they can’t function because of all the abuse,” said Lisa, 30, who declined to give her family name, as she waited with other protesters for the Popemobile to pass.</s>Sign up for one of our email newsletters.

KNOCK, Ireland — Pope Francis issued a sweeping apology Sunday for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying church officials regularly didn’t respond with compassion to the many abuses children and women suffered over the years and vowing to work for justice.

Francis was interrupted by applause as he read the apology out loud at the start of Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Hundreds of miles away, somber protesters marched through the Irish town of Tuam and recited the names of an estimated 800 babies and young children who died at a Catholic Church-run orphanage there, most during the 1950s.

“Elizabeth Murphy, 4 months. Annie Tyne, 3 months. John Joseph Murphy, 10 months,” the protesters said in memory of the children who were buried in an unmarked mass grave whose discovery was confirmed only last year.

Francis, who is on a weekend visit to Ireland, told the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out for Mass that he met Saturday with victims of all sorts of abuses: sexual and labor, as well as children wrenched from their unwed mothers and forcibly put up for adoption.

Responding to a plea from the adoptees, the pope assured their aging biological mothers that it wasn’t a sin to go looking for the lost children they had lost. The woman had been told for decades that it was.

“May the Lord keep this state of shame and compunction and give us strength so this never happens again, and that there is justice,” he said.

Ireland has thousands of now-adult adoptees who were taken at birth from their mothers, who had been forced to live and work in laundries and other workhouses for “fallen women.”

One forced adoptee, Clodagh Malone, said Francis was “shocked” at what the group that met with the pope told him and “he listened to each and every one of us with respect and compassion.”

The survivors asked Francis to speak out Sunday to let all the mothers know that they did nothing wrong and that it wasn’t a sin — as church officials had told them — to try to find their children later in life.

They said the Argentine pope understood well their plight, given Argentina’s own history of forced adoptions of children born to purported leftists during its 1970s military dictatorship.

“That is a big step forward for a lot of elderly women, particularly in the countryside in Ireland, who have lived 30, 40, 50, 60 years in fear,” another adoptee, Paul Redmond, told The Associated Press. “That would mean a lot to them.”

Francis’ first day in Ireland was dominated by the abuse scandal and Ireland’s fraught history of atrocities committed in the name of purifying the Catholic faith. He received a lukewarm reception on the streets, but tens of thousands of people thronged Dublin’s Croke Park Stadium on Saturday night for a family rally featuring Ireland’s famous Riverdance performers and tenor Andrea Boccelli.

The abuse scandal has devastated the church’s reputation in Ireland since the 1990s and has exploded anew in the United States.

The American church’s scandal took a new twist Sunday, when two conservative Catholic news outlets, the National Catholic Register and LifeSiteNews, published a letter attributed to a former Vatican ambassador to the United States.

The letter attributed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano accused Vatican officials of knowing about the sexual escapades of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick since 2000, but making him a cardinal anyway. Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal last month after a U.S. church investigation determined an accusation he molested a minor was “credible.”

In the letter, Vigano said McCarrick initially was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2009 or 2010, but that Francis rehabilitated him in 2013 despite being informed of McCarrick’s penchant to invite young seminarians into his bed.

The Vatican didn’t immediately comment on the letter.

In Tuam, meanwhile, survivors of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home They lit candles and placed hundreds of pairs of tiny shoes around a tiny white coffin at the site near a sewage area on the home’s former grounds where the babies and children were buried.

Irish government-appointed investigators reported last year that DNA analysis of selected remains confirmed the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks to 3 years old and were buried chiefly in the 1950s. The Tuam home closed in 1961.

An amateur Irish historian, Catherine Corless, led to the discovery of the grave after she tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who had died as residents of the facility, but could find a burial record for only one child.

Corless and Tuam survivors are seeking an apology from the pope, as well as a decision to exhume the children’s remains to give them a proper church burial.</s>KNOCK, Ireland — The Latest on Pope Francis' trip to Ireland (all times local):

Pope Francis has denounced how Irish children were "robbed of their innocence and taken from their mothers" by Catholic Church-run institutions that put them up for adoption for the shame of having been born to unwed mothers.

Francis spoke out about Ireland's haunting history of forced adoptions during a prayer Sunday in Knock, the country's main shrine dedicated to Christ's mother, Mary.

He did so after meeting Saturday with some of the adoptees, who urged him to denounce the practice, demand an apology from the religious sisters responsible and assure the mothers they could search now for their lost children without fear of sin.

Francis prayed that such abuses never occur again and for the church "to proceed with justice and reparation, where responsible, for the violences."

Pope Francis has visited a famous shrine in Ireland and was to celebrate a Mass dedicated to families a day after an emotional meeting with victims of cleric sex abuse and some of Ireland's thousands of forced adoptees.

Francis arrived Sunday in Knock, the Marian shrine in northwestern Ireland, where he prayed and blessed thousands of jubilant Irish faithful, who gathered in raincoats under clouds.

Francis' first day in Ireland was dominated by the abuse scandal and Ireland's fraught history of atrocities committed in the name of preserving the Catholic faith. He received a lukewarm reception on the streets, but tens of thousands thronged Dublin's Croke Park Stadium for a family rally and concert.

The U.S. sexual abuse scandal took on a new twist Sunday, with a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. purportedly penning a letter accusing Vatican officials of knowing about the sexual escapades of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick since 2000, but making him a cardinal anyway. The letter was attributed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a staunch conservative.</s>Pope Francis touched down in Dublin on Saturday for an historic two-day visit to Ireland, where the Catholic Church is battling to regain trust following multiple sexual abuse scandals.

His Alitalia "Shepherd One" flight landed under cloudless skies at 10:26am (0926 GMT), and he emerged from the aircraft around 20 minutes later to a round of applause.

He was met on the red carpet by deputy head of government Simon Coveney and his children, who presented him with a bouquet of white and yellow roses with Irish foliage.

It is the first papal visit to the former bastion of Catholicism since Pope John Paul II spoke to a crowd of 1.5 million people in 1979.

ALSO READ | Pope on sex abuse: "We showed no care for the little ones"

Hundreds of thousands of wellwishers and over a 1,000 journalists are expected to follow Francis during his tour of Dublin and County Mayo in the far west of the country as the church struggles against the tide in Ireland.

A new generation has shed traditional mores, electing a gay prime minister and voting to legalise same-sex marriage and abortion -- both once unthinkable.

Fintan O'Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times, said the Catholic Church in Ireland was "in some ways beyond repair".

"He will be greeted with joy by the faithful, but few, even among them, will expect him to be able to fix an institution that has been shaken to its very foundations," he wrote.

The Vatican was rocked this month by a devastating US report into child sex abuse that accused more than 300 priests in the state of Pennsylvania of abusing more than 1,000 children since the 1950s.

The pope wrote a letter to the world's 1.3 billion Catholics vowing to prevent future "atrocities" but conceding no efforts "to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient".

Ireland has grappled with its own history of abuse, with multiple probes finding Catholic Church leaders protected hundreds of predatory priests over decades.

Former Irish president Mary McAleese revealed this month she rebuffed Vatican attempts in 2003 to keep Church documents inaccessible to government investigators.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, a symbol of Ireland's social sea change, has said he will press Francis for full disclosure to the police of abuse allegations received by Church officials when the pair meet briefly in Dublin on Saturday.

"We've brought in mandatory reporting over the last year and that's not the case in other countries," he told Sky News on Friday.

The Argentine pontiff will be in Ireland to close the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF) -- a global Catholic gathering that takes place every three years.

In a video message released on Tuesday, he said he was "excited at the thought of returning to Ireland".

Francis will tour Dublin on Saturday on his Popemobile before visiting a hostel for homeless families and giving a speech at Croke Park stadium.

The highlight of the visit will be an outdoor mass in the city's Phoenix Park on Sunday expected to draw 500,000 people -- a tenth of the country's entire population.

Priests and nuns from across Ireland have flocked to the capital, where merchandise -- from candles to dolls to t-shirts all bearing his image -- are on sale.

Critics of the Church have also been preparing for Francis.

Victims of clergy abuse and their supporters will hold a "Stand for Truth" demonstration in Dublin during the Sunday mass.

"We cannot stay silent as the Vatican uses its power and pomp to forcefully deny the reality of the harm it has done," organisers wrote on Facebook, where nearly 3,000 people had signed up to attend.

In Tuam, a town in western Ireland, a silent vigil was planned in solidarity with victims of "mother and baby" homes -- institutions accused of being punishment hostels for unwed pregnant women.

The Irish government in 2015 launched a commission to investigate 18 such homes -- the last of which closed in 1996 -- after revelations that up to 800 infants may have died over several decades at one run by Catholic nuns in Tuam.

Accusations of wide-ranging abuse in Irish Catholic institutions in Ireland date back several decades.

"We have such a history of abuse and so many have had their lives destroyed," Marie Collins, a survivor of clerical abuse, told AFP.

"It is important that while he is here this issue is addressed face on and we get clear words as to what he's going to do and what is going to happen next."

The Vatican confirmed Francis will meet with victims but provided no details while adding that he was unlikely to announce specific measures to combat sexual abuse.</s>The bishop of Tulsa stated Sunday that allegations by the former papal nuncio to the United States that Pope Francis knew of Cardinal McCarrick’s sexual predation and yet reinstated him to a position of influence are a “good place” to start investigations into clerical sex abuse and cover-up.

On Saturday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released an 11-page affidavit claiming Pope Benedict had imposed “canonical sanctions” on Cardinal McCarrick, forbidding him from traveling, celebrating Mass in public, or participating in public meetings, but that Pope Francis later lifted these sanctions and made McCarrick his close personal adviser.

Asked about these allegations on the papal plane returning from a weekend trip to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis refused to deny the archbishop’s claims, saying he would not utter “a single word” about the accusations and suggesting, rather, that journalists read the statement and draw their own conclusions from the report.

In a Facebook post Sunday evening, Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa said an investigation into sexual abuse and cover-up was necessary to “restore holiness and accountability to the leadership of the Church” and that Archbishop Viganò’s statement is “a good place to begin the investigations.”

“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,” he added:</s>Pope Francis deflected questions from reporters about his alleged lifting of sanctions imposed on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for sexual abuse, telling reporters Sunday to read the accusations and make their own assessment of their credibility.

On the papal plane returning from Ireland Sunday night, a journalist asked the pope point blank whether allegations were true that the papal nuncio to the United States had explicitly informed him in 2013 of sexual abuse perpetrated by Cardinal McCarrick and subsequent sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI, including restrictions on his travel and appearances in public.

“May I ask you whether these two things are true?” said Anna Matranga of CBS News.

“I would prefer—even though I will respond to your question—I would prefer to speak first about this trip and then about other topics, but I will respond,” the pope said.

“I read that statement this morning,” he said, in reference to an 11-page affidavit by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the United States, which claimed that the pope knew about McCarrick’s misdeeds and yet reinstated him to a position of influence within the Vatican.

“I read it and sincerely I must tell you this, you and all of you who are interested, read the statement carefully and come to your own conclusion. I won’t say a word about this,” he said.

“I believe that the statement speaks for itself and you have the sufficient journalistic ability to draw your own conclusions. This is an act of trust. When some time has passed and you have come to your conclusions, maybe I will speak,” he said.

“But I would like your professional maturity to do this work. It will be good for you. That’s good,” he said.

Pressing further, Ms. Matranga asked a follow-up question: “I want to ask you: when was the first time that you heard about the abuses committed by the former cardinal?”

The pope demurred further, refusing to answer the direct question.

“This comes out in the statement regarding McCarrick. Study it and then I will speak,” he said.

“I await your comments on the document. I would like that,” he said.</s>Pope Francis, on the first papal visit to Ireland Saturday in almost four decades, expressed "outrage" Saturday over the Catholic Church's cover-up of sex abuse and later met with eight survivors of what the Vatican called "clerical, religious and institutional abuse."

Ireland is ground zero of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis, with the institution under fire across the globe for its systemic failures to protect children or to punish bishops who hid the crimes.

“With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” Pope Francis said, speaking in Italian.

“The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — to adequately address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community," he said in a speech to Irish government authorities. "I myself share these sentiments.”

He did not indicate, however, whether he plans to take forceful action to hold bishops accountable for protecting children or to sanction them when they fall short.

The pope did meet later with the eight survivors, including some abused sexually and several who as infants were forcibly separated from their mothers in church-run orphans homes.

Francis referred to the past remarks of Pope Benedict in a letter to Irish Catholics saying that he “spared no words in recognizing both the gravity of the situation” and in demanding that “truly evangelical, just and effective” measures be taken in response “to this betrayal of trust.”

In their meeting with the pope, the group of survivors delivered a letter calling on the pontiff to condemn the forced separations of 100,000 mothers from their children in notorious adoption centers.

“The nuns have never taken responsibility for their willful neglect," the letter said, according to the Irish Times. "We ask you Pope Francis to publicly call on these nuns to acknowledge their actions and issue an open and unqualified apology."

The pope, in turn, agreed to end a mass on Sunday by telling mothers who had given up their children for adoption that there was no sin in now looking for their children, the newspaper reported.

Pope Francis arrives at The Festival of Families event at Croke Park on August 25, 2018 in Dublin, Ireland.

Upon his arrival from Rome, Pope Francis sought to get ahead of the public criticism in his opening remarks to several hundred dignitaries from Irish political, civic and religious life.

“It is my hope that the gravity of the abuse scandals, which have cast a light on the failings of many, will serve to emphasize the importance of the protection of minors and vulnerable adults on the part of society as a whole,” he said, according to a transcript published by the Irish Times.

But neither Francis’ words nor a new meeting with abuse victims is likely to calm the outrage among rank-and-file Catholics following new revelations of sexual misconduct and cover-up in the United States, an ongoing crisis in Chile and prosecutions of top clerics in Australia and France.

Colm O’Gorman, who is leading a solidarity rally Sunday in Dublin for abuse victims, said Francis’ remarks about the shame felt by Catholics were an “insult to faithful Catholics, who have no reason to feel shame because of the crimes of the Vatican and the institutional church.”

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of the online resource Bishop Accountability, said Francis “gave little comfort to heartsick victims” since he provided no details on how he would end the problem, since he alone can sanction complicit bishops.

A small group of protesters demonstrated against the pope’s visit outside Dublin Castle, with one banner reading: “Pedophile supporters go home.”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, in remarks in Dublin Castle before the pontiff spoke, set the tone for the visit in saying the time had come to build a "new" and "more mature" relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish state.

“Building on our intertwined history, and learning from our shared mistakes and responsibilities, it can be one in which religion is no longer at the center of our society, but one in which it continues to have an important place,” he said.

He referred to "dark aspects" of the Catholic Church's history in Ireland, including illegal adoptions and child abuse by the clergy, as “stains on our State, our society and also the Catholic Church.”

Varadkar called the abuse “unspeakable crimes" that were perpetrated by people within the church "and then obscured to protect the institution."

"It is a story that was all too tragically familiar to people in Ireland," he said, according to the Times.

Addressing the Church’s handling of clerical sex abuse, the prime minister said there “can only be zero tolerance for those who abuse innocent children or who facilitate the abuse.”

Ireland has had one of the worst records of abuse in the world. Crimes were revealed to the deeply Catholic nation’s 4.8 million people through a series of government-mandated inquiries over the past decade. The reviews concluded that thousands of children were raped or molested by priests and physically abused in church-run schools while bishops covered up for abusers.</s>Pope Francis on Sunday asked for forgiveness for the “scandal and betrayal” felt by victims of sexual exploitation by Catholic clergy as he continued his tour of Ireland where years of abuse scandals have shattered the Church’s former dominance.

On the first papal visit to Ireland in almost four decades, Francis privately met with eight victims of clerical, religious and institutional abuse on Saturday and said he would seek a greater commitment to eliminating this “scourge”.

But pressure on the pope over the issue increased on Sunday when a former top Vatican official accused Francis of having known of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent U.S. cardinal for five years before accepting his resignation last month.

“None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence and left scarred,” Francis told a crowd of tens of thousands at the Knock shrine in the west of Ireland on Sunday morning.

“This open wound challenges us to be firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice. I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” he said, to applause from the crowd.

Years of sexual abuse scandals have shattered the credibility of the Church which four decades ago dominated Irish society. In the past three years, Irish voters have approved abortion and gay marriage in referendums, defying its wishes.

The dwindling influence of the Catholic Church has been demonstrated by crowds far smaller than those that met Pope John Paul II during the last Papal visit in 1979, when more than three-quarters of Ireland’s population turned out.

Francis, facing sexual abuse crises in several countries, wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics last week asking each one of them to help root out “this culture of death” and vowing there would be no more cover ups.

Some of those who turned out on a misty morning in Knock, where a group of locals in 1879 said they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, said Francis should be given a chance to deal with the abuse issues that have rocked the Church for decades.

“People have to give this man a chance, he’s trying his best,” said Carmel Lane, who travelled from County Longford in the Irish midlands to attend the Mass.

Vatican officials on Sunday declined immediate comment on an 11-page letter given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets in which Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said he had told Francis in 2013 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had faced extensive accusations of sexually abusing lower-ranking seminarians and priests.

McCarrick became the first Cardinal in living memory to resign his position in the Church leadership after a review concluded that allegations he had sexually abused a 16-year-old boy were credible.

McCarrick has said that he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged abuse of the teenager 50 years ago but has not commented on the other allegations.

One survivor of clerical abuse who met the pope on Saturday, Paul Redmond, said strong language used by Francis at the meeting gave him hope that something might be shifting in the Catholic Church.

“There’s been a lot of false dawns, there’s been a lot of empty promises and a lot of talk but maybe, maybe this is the time something, something substantial will actually happen in the Church,” Redmond told Reuters.

But others who took part in sporadic protests around Dublin on Saturday were not convinced.

“I don’t think he should come and expect us to pay for his visit when there are people today in Ireland who are so damaged and need so much help that they can’t function because of all the abuse,” said Lisa, 30, who declined to give her family name, as she waited with other protesters for the Popemobile to pass.</s>The Pope has spent 90 minutes meeting Irish survivors of clerical abuse and mistreatment in Dublin. The “polite and cordial” discussion focused on the plight of past residents of Catholic homes for mothers and babies and victims of forced and illegal adoption. The meeting took place at the Papal Nuncio’s residence. The Papal Nuncio is the Pope’s diplomatic representative to Ireland. A letter from survivors released afterwards said: “Around 100,000 single mothers who were forcibly separated from their babies were regularly told it was a mortal sin to search for, or even contact, their own sons and daughters. “As an act of healing, Pope Francis, we ask that you make it clear to the now elderly and dying community of natural mothers and adoptees that there is no sin in reunion and rather that it is a joyous event that should be encouraged and facilitated by the Catholic Church.” They said many natural mothers and adoptees will be in attendance at a papal Mass on Sunday.

The letter added: “Five orders and congregations of Catholic nuns ran Ireland’s notorious Mother and Baby homes where over 6,000 babies and children died as well as dozens of young mothers. “These nuns have never taken responsibility for their wilful neglect. We ask you, Pope Francis, to publicly call on these nuns to acknowledge their actions and issue an unqualified apology to all the survivors of their institutions. “We also request that you call on these nuns to immediately commit to paying the full cost of the current inquiry and any redress that may be awarded in the future.” The papal visit to Ireland has so far been dominated by the Vatican’s response to clerical abuse. Clodagh Malone, who was born in Saint Patrick’s Mother and Baby home in Dublin and adopted at 10 weeks old, asked the Pope to publicly state that the natural mothers who lost their babies to adoption had done nothing wrong, and call for reconciliation and reunion for these families broken by the Catholic Church both in Ireland and around the world. The Pope agreed to include the message in his Mass on Sunday, survivors said. Paul Redmond, who was born in Castlepollard Mother and Baby home in Co Westmeath and adopted at 17 days, asked the Pope to publicly call upon the orders of nuns who ran the homes to immediately accept their responsibilities for the “horror” that went on for generations in the homes, issue an unqualified and sincere apology, and pay the full costs of inquiries and redress in Ireland as a matter of urgency. The Pope did apologise to all for what happened in the homes, the survivors said.
Pope Francis holds Sunday Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland for the World Meeting of Families.