© PAPreparations are made at Phoenix Park in Dublin ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland.
Decades of child sex abuse scandals have eroded Irish trust in the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis's planned weekend visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families comes at a tumultuous time for the Catholic Church around the globe.
Last week's grand jury report out of Pennsylvania,
uncovering years of child sexual abuse at the hands of hundreds of priests across the state, is the latest entry in a laundry list of scandals that have rocked church leaders and parishioners in recent years.
In Ireland, historically among the most Catholic countries in the world, churchgoers are experiencing their own nationwide reckoning with sexual abuse of children by priests and a subsequent, systematic cover-up that allowed such abuse to happen.
The embattled pope's visit comes less than a week after he issued
a 2,000-word apology for the church's role in the international sex abuse crisis. Though critics say his missive lacked concrete solutions for dealing with this crisis, it'll be his first opportunity to make public amends with Catholics both in Ireland and around the world. But sex abuse is not the only issue that will be on Irish Catholics' minds as the pope makes his arrival.
The past few years have seen this once-devout country shaken by a series of scandals within the Catholic Church, including the revelations of forced labor and systemic physical abuse at many of the country's Catholic orphanages and care homes. Meanwhile, the country has, in recent years, become increasingly secular and liberal, countering traditional, conservative Catholic social policy.
A country in which divorce, homosexuality, and abortion were all illegal has now transformed into the first country in Europe to legalize same-sex marriage by referendum. It is a country that overturned its historic abortion ban just a few months ago, something that would have been all but unthinkable one generation ago. If one thing is clear, it's that the Ireland of 2018 is not the Ireland of nearly four decades ago, when Pope John Paul II became the first sitting pope to visit the country.
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