Greg Daly
Marie Collins Leading child protection campaigner Marie Collins has dismissed reports that she has not been invited to meet Pope Francis during his visit to Ireland this August.
The Irish Independent reported the claim on Saturday in an article titled ‘Clerical abuse survivor not invited to meet Pope’. The article added that Mrs Collins had called on the Pope to make time to visit the North and meet victims of clerical abuse when he comes to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families.
The online version of the article was accompanied by a picture of Mrs Collins, captioned “Mrs Collins has never had a chance to meet Pope Francis”, and stated that she felt hurt that she had not been granted a meeting with the Pontiff.
However, rejecting these claims on Twitter, the former member of the Pope’s child protection commission said she neither sought nor expected a meeting with the Pope during his time in Ireland.
“I am not looking to have a meeting with Pope Francis and do not expect one,” she wrote, continuing, “I answered a number of questions from this newspaper about the Papal visit. They chose to make a headline feature of this comment out of context.”
Mrs Collins added that there were “factual errors” in the piece, and clarified that she had not called on the Pope to visit the North to meet survivors.
“I said it would be disappointing if he did not make a pastoral visit and meet survivors while there,” she wrote, adding that she had met the Pope “to shake his hand” in the past.
Mrs Collins subsequently described the article’s author, journalist Sarah McDonald, as “a respected professional” and said that her problem had been with changes to the text made by a sub-editor.
With the Pope’s full itinerary for his Irish trip not yet confirmed, it is understood that no invitations have so far been issued for meetings with him.