Irish revolution; Final Journey

This is the Place of Betrayal.

Roll back the stones
behind madonna blue walls.
Make visible the tree.
Above percussion of engines
from gloom of catacombs,
through a glaze of prayer,
stumble of chanting,
make visible the tree,
its branches ragged
with washed-out linens
of a bleached out shroud.
In this shattered landscape,
sharpened tongues
of sulphur-yellow bulldozers
slice through wombs
of blood-soaked generations.
This is the place where Veronica,
forsaken,
stares and stares
at a blank towel.

Patricia Burke Brogan

10 March 2009
A Public Sculpture to honour Galway’s Magdalen women was unveiled on International Women’s Day, - Sunday 8th March at 1.00pm on the corner of Forster St and Bóthar Breandán O Eithir Forster Street, Galway City, facing the site of the former Convent of Mercy’s Magdalen laundry, demolished in 1991.

The carved limestone sculptural figure of a women lifting a veil from her head entitled “ Final Journey” is by the local artist and stone mason Mick Wilkins and features inscribed poetry by playwright and poet Patricia Burke Brogan, who is internationally known for her award-winning play “Eclipsed” about the Magdalen Women.

The sculpture permanently marks the city and Galway’s memory of the women who endured life in the laundry and the heroic steps they took to overcome their oppression.
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Apology to victims of abuse in institutions was right, says Ahern
March 26, 2009

FORMER TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has described his apology to the victims
of child abuse in State institutions as “one of the best decisions” he made in
government.

The apology was made in May 1999. It led to the setting up of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which is due to report in May, and to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, which has paid out €825 million to almost 10,800 former residents of such institutions. The final bill is likely to be about €1.1 billion.

Mr Ahern visited the Aislinn Centre in his constituency yesterday to present Further Education and Training Awards Council (Fetac) certificates to victims of abuse who studied over the last number of years. The visit was to mark 10 years since the apology was given. Mr Ahern was greeted warmly by his audience, which was mainly comprised of those who had been in such institutions.

He said he had come under strong pressure for legal and financial reasons not to
apologise to the victims of abuse, but had taken the decision to do it anyway.
“There were plenty of people telling me not to do it and there were
compelling arguments, financial and legal, why we should say nothing, but they
did not hold water with me.” He said warnings that compensation for victims
would be expensive was “not an incorrect assumption”, but it was worth doing
anyway.

“Just to take that as the basis of it would have left all these people, and the hundreds and thousands who were in England, with shattered lives. It was a costly decision, but it was still the right thing to do.”

He defended the controversial decision to cap the contribution of the religious institutions at €128 million. “If you were to add up what the religious gave to the State, the State owes the religious far more.”
He had been persuaded by abuse survivor Christine Buckley to issue the apology.
Dear Daughter, Ms Buckley’s account of her time in the notorious Goldenbridge
orphanage, was made into an RTÉ documentary in 1996. It shocked the nation and galvanised other victims into seeking redress for what happened to them.

“I think her sincerity and passion for justice made a lasting impression on me and my colleagues,” Mr Ahern said. “She was a great source of knowledge and counsel to me in making sure the government sought to do the right thing and to help those who had the terrible misfortune, as many had, to suffer child abuse.”

Ms Buckley said she had first contacted Mr Ahern about the issue in the 1990s, while he was opposition leader. “He said when he got into power that we would make history. That is exactly what happened.”

Mr Ahern said institutional child abuse was a “scandal of monumental proportion” and successive governments had ignored it.

“There was a reluctance to admit that as a State and a society we failed many of the children of the nation in allowing them to be incarcerated in places where they
were not cherished, but poorly treated.”

CHRISM MASS 2009
Homily Notes of
Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland
Holy Thursday, Pro-Cathedral, 9TH April 2009
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A year of Evangelisation is not just a series of events and programmes from which you pick or choose at random. The Gospel reading reminds us that a Year of Evangelisation is realising in our times the Year of the Lord which Jesus announced. A Year of Evangelisation takes on meaning if we can say on each day of the year: “today the scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing”, through my ministry and through the ministry of the entire Church.The Archdiocese of Dublin is facing challenges of a kind that it has not experienced for many years. The Report of the Commission on Child Sexual Abuse will shock us all. It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is. The report will make each of us and the entire Church in Dublin a humbler Church.
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