Katherine Zappone Governmental advisers did not believe Pope Francis had been fully briefed on key hot-button issues ahead of his trip to Ireland, it has been revealed.
Documents received by the Sunday Independent have shown that while crafting her brief message to the Pope about the Tuam Mother and Babies home, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone was advised that the Pontiff had probably never even been told about the issue.
“Even raising it with him is meaningful. It will, no doubt, be the first time that it has been raised with him,” one adviser wrote.
Several survivors of institutional and clerical sexual abuse who met the Pope during his visit have testified to Pope Francis apparently knowing little or nothing about Mother and Baby homes, Magdalene laundries or industrial schools, and needing to be told about them.
After meeting these survivors, Pope Francis told a group of Jesuits, “I didn’t know that in Ireland there were also cases where unmarried women had their children taken away from them.”