POPE Francis has marked the first papal visit to Ireland in 39 years by acknowledging the failure of Church authorities to adequately address “repugnant” clerical child abuse.

Francis arrived on Saturday (local time) for a highly charged visit to a society transformed since more than three-quarters of the population flocked to see Pope John Paul II in 1979 and beset by the kind of abuse scandals that have once more mired the Catholic Church in crisis.

“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” Francis told a state reception attended by some abuse survivors.

“The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — adequately to address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community.”

Francis then met with eight Irish abuse victims after expressing “pain and shame” over the “failure” of Catholic Church authorities to deal with the abuses, the Vatican said.

“Pope Francis met early Saturday evening for an hour and a half with eight survivors of clerical, religious and institutional abuse,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said in a statement.

The eight included a victim of Catholic priest Tony Walsh, who abused hundreds of children over a period of nearly two decades before he was finally cast out of the priesthood and imprisoned.

Mr Burke said the victim “preferred to remain anonymous”.

Marie Collins, who was abused by a priest when she was being treated in hospital at the age of 13, was also among the eight.

Ms Collins last year resigned from a Vatican commission on child protection set up by the pope over its failure to take action.

Others present at the meeting with the pontiff included Fr Patrick McCafferty, who suffered abuse while training for the priesthood in the 1980s, and Dublin city councillor Damian O’Farrell, who was abused aged 12, Irish media reported.

Another of the eight who met the Argentinian pontiff was Paul Jude Redmond, whose mother was one of thousands of “fallen” Irish women who were locked up in Catholic-run institutions for being pregnant and unmarried.

Following the Pope’s meeting, Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, the country’s first gay leader, told the religious leader that the wounds of clerical child abuse that stained the Irish state were still open and there was much to be done.

A CHANGED COUNTRY
Today, Ireland is no longer the staunchly Catholic country it was in 1979 when divorce and contraception were illegal and over the past three years, voters have approved abortion and gay marriage in referendums, defying the will of the Church.

Francis seemed to address the change, asking that Ireland not forget “the powerful strains of the Christian message” that have sustained it in the past and can continue to do so.

However, numbers lining the streets or joining the pope in prayer are expected to be about a quarter of the 2.7 million who greeted John Paul II, marking how the rock that was once Irish Catholicism has eroded since child abuse cases came to light in the 1990s.

Francis touched down in Dublin for his historic two-day visit to Ireland just before 11am on Saturday (local time), where deputy head of government Simon Coveney and his children were waiting to meet him with a bouquet of white and yellow roses with Irish foliage.

Hundreds of thousands of wellwishers and over a 1,000 journalists are expected to follow Francis during his tour of Dublin and County Mayo in the far west of the country.

He then officially began his tour by visiting Irish President Michael D. Higgins’ residence where he met the Hassoun family, asylum seekers from Syria.

He repeated his call for a solution to the refugee crisis that goes far beyond short-term political decisions.

In a statement following their meeting, Mr Higgins said he raised with the pope the immense suffering caused by child sex abuse and anger which had been conveyed to him at what was perceived to be the impunity enjoyed by those responsible.

Francis will then tour Dublin on his Popemobile before visiting a hostel for homeless families and giving a speech at Croke Park stadium.

The highlight of the visit will be an outdoor mass in the city’s Phoenix Park on Sunday, expected to draw 500,000 people — a tenth of the country’s entire population.

IRELAND’S DARK PAST
But neither Francis’ words nor the meeting with victims is likely to calm the outrage among rank-and-file Catholics in Ireland and abroad following new revelations of sexual misconduct and cover-up in the US, an ongoing crisis in Chile and prosecutions of top clerics in Australia and France.

Ireland has had one of the worst records of abuse in the world, crimes that were revealed to its 4.8 million deeply Catholic people over the past decade by a series of government-mandated inquiries.

They revealed thousands of children raped and molested by priests and physically abused in church-run schools, and bishops who covered up the crimes.

After the Irish church atoned for its past and enacted tough new norms to fight abuse, it had been looking to the first visit by a pope in 40 years to show a different, more caring church that understands the problems of ordinary Catholic families today.

But victims and their supporters will hold a “Stand for Truth” demonstration in Dublin during the Sunday mass.

The Pope has vowed to end sex abuse “at any cost” but he is unlikely to announce specific measures to combat sexual abuse within the church in Dublin, following a devastating recent US report that accused more than 300 priests in the state of Pennsylvania of abusing more than 1,000 children since the 1950s.

But many of the faithful remain hopeful.

“I see a lot of new life among young people who have a deep committed faith, Catholic faith,” said Sean Ascogh, a churchgoer at a recent service in Blessington southwest of Dublin. “Obviously they are very disappointed by what has been happening in the church in the last few years, particularly the whole abuse scandals, but I think people can see beyond that.”

Irish abuse victims and their supporters are expected to hold a solidarity rally on Sunday in Dublin, at the same time Francis is celebrating his final Mass to close out the family conference.

Separately, survivors of Ireland’s wretched “mother and baby homes” — where children were exiled for the shame of having been born to unwed mothers — are holding their own demonstration Sunday. The location is Tuam, site of a mass grave of hundreds of babies who died over the years at a church-run home.

Francis will be nearby, visiting the Marian shrine at Knock, but has no plans to visit the gravesite.

On the eve of Francis’ arrival in Dublin, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley — the pope’s top abuse counsellor — said protecting children and vulnerable adults is now the single most crucial issue facing the church.

“All endeavours at evangelisation and other great works will be dependent upon our ability to own our crimes and failings and to make the protection of children and vulnerable adults our No. 1 priority,” O’Malley said in a statement read out to a safeguarding panel at the World Meeting of Families.

O’Malley had been expected to headline the panel in person, but he backed out at the last minute, citing a new inquiry he launched into his diocesan seminary amid sexual misconduct allegations — one of three big U.S. seminaries that have launched such investigations in recent weeks.