The wounds and divisions within the Catholic Church in Ireland make the upcoming International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin an important moment for renewal and reconciliation, said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin. The archbishop spoke at a Vatican news conference May 10 as a growing chorus of voices called for the resignation of Ireland’s Catholic primate, Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, over allegations he did not do enough to stop an abusive priest in the 1970s.
The news conference about the International Eucharistic Congress scheduled for June 10-17 also came on the heels of reports that the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently censured five Irish priests over their stance on issues such as the ordination of women, the ban on artificial birth control, mandatory clerical celibacy and homosexuality. The eucharistic congress, Archbishop Martin said, “will reflect and showcase the church in Ireland, a church which has faced and still faces enormous challenges, but a church which is alive and vital and anxious to set out on a path of renewal. There are divisions within the Irish church and at times unhealthy divisions,” he said, but the eucharistic congress could be “an event of reconciliation and rebuilding of unity” like the congress held in Dublin in 1932, less than 10 years after the Irish civil war.
VATICAN CITY (CNS)