{"id":4166,"date":"2018-08-18T23:52:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T06:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=4166"},"modified":"2018-08-19T02:32:58","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T09:32:58","slug":"post1-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=4166","title":{"rendered":"“Mary McAleese slams World Meeting of Families as ‘right wing rally’ to fight against LGBT and women’s rights”, Independent.ie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Conor McGrave, Dublin, August 18, 2018<\/p>\n

Former president Mary McAleese has described the World Meeting of Families taking place next weekend as a \u201cright wing rally\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She said it was a response against the growing acceptance towards LGBT people in Ireland after photos of same-sex couples were removed from the event\u2019s leaflets.<\/p>\n

The former president had hoped the event would be a unifying one based on the theme of inclusion but said it was always designed to fight against gay rights and abortion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s always been essentially a right wing rally… and it was designed for that purpose, to rally people to get them motivated to fight against the tide of same sex marriage, rights for gays, abortion rights, contraceptive rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms McAleese said she would only be attending an event at Dublin Castle in her role as a former president but would not be attending any other events to welcome Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

The Belfast-native, whose son is gay, has repeatedly spoken out against the exclusion of the LGBT community from the Catholic Church as well as the historic clerical abuse scandals.<\/p>\n

The cover up of this abuse \u201cis not only systemic, it was directed from central command and control which is the Vatican,\u201d she told Brendan O\u2019Connor on RT\u00c9\u2019s Marian Finucane Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt strikes me as impossible to believe that all bishops acted equally negligent by coincidence, that\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this week a US grand jury report revealed thousands of children were abused by around 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania since the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read the report from Pennsylvania and it is just so distressing and depressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think of all the thousands of children now who are carrying the burden of that and will carry it through their lives because of an institution that they trusted, failed them yet again,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cReading it was a horror story. I didn\u2019t sleep very well after reading it the other night.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said \u201cone has to assume\u201d the Pope was aware of the abuse outlined in the report which said leaders in the church had \u201clargely gone without accountability\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese would have been well known, certainly in the latter days when all of these cases had to be sent to Rome, that he would have been briefed on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would like to think that he would have been briefed on them, these are so significant when you are talking about 300 abusing priests in six dioceses in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Pope Francis said he was on the side of the victims mentioned in the report, however, Ms McAleese said \u201cexpressions of sorrow\u201d were not enough of a response following centuries of abuse within the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Mary McAleese also revealed she made a formal complaint to Pope Francis after being banned from attending a Vatican conference in March.<\/p>\n

The former president had an invitation to attend an International Women\u2019s Day conference rescinded in February over her support for LGBT rights.<\/p>\n

The event in question was organised by the Voice of the Faith group to \u201cempower and advocate for Catholic women to have a seat at the table of decision making in the Catholic Church\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the decision to invite the former Irish head of state was opposed by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, which led to the event being held outside of the Holy See.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a formal complaint against Cardinal Farrell, to the Pope, the Pope is the only person as his superior who could rectify and deal with and judge that complaint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a formal canonical complaint to the Pope about Cardinal Farrell\u2019s actions. Having received neither an acknowledgement nor a reply to date, I can only presume the Pope is his immediate superior, that this was done with his approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey claim there is a process for dealing with such complaints, I\u2019m six months down the road of that complaint and I haven\u2019t had the letter back that says we\u2019ve received your complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she consulted with the Archbishop of Dublin with a view to rectifying the situation ahead of the Pope\u2019s visit for the World Meeting of Families.<\/p>\n

However despite efforts which she said continued for three months there was no moving the Vatican\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

Independent.ie<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conor McGrave, Dublin, August 18, 2018 Former president Mary McAleese has described the World Meeting of Families taking place next weekend as a \u201cright wing rally\u201d. She said it was a response against the growing acceptance towards LGBT people in Ireland after photos of same-sex couples were removed from the event\u2019s leaflets. The former president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4180,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions\/4180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}