In both the sex abuse of children and persecution of LGBTQ persons, the Irish point their fingers in the right direction.

While Pope Francis was saying Mass on Sunday for the Church-sponsored World Meeting of Families in Dublin, a large crowd gathered to protest four miles away. “The pope’s requests for forgiveness in his Phoenix Park sermon, including for members of the Church hierarchy who covered up ‘painful situations,’ were far too little and too late for the crowd who had gathered at the garden dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives for Irish freedom.”

Banners read: “Hey Pope Francis you’re outta chances”, “The Pope is a dope”, “The Pope is protecting paedophiles”, “Religion is fine, rape is not”, “Repeal the Church”, and, perhaps most cuttingly: “The Church way worse than the Brits.”

“The pope is the most hypocritical person in the world. He’s done nothing,” said Martin Segrada, 83, who had travelled from Spain to hand out banners denouncing Pope Francis.

“I think the pope has unbelievable gall not to be on his knees apologizing,” Dent Donna said.

Garrett O’Keeffe, who carried a sign saying “truth, justice, love,” said “it’s just not right” that people are celebrating the pope’s visit. “If he crawled out the airport into town it wouldn’t have been enough. He needs to release the files, he needs to pay what he owes, he needs to truly repent and have mandatory reporting worldwide of various abuses,” he said.

Colm O’Gorman, an abuse survivor who is now executive director of Amnesty International, organized the event which was timed to coincide with the Mass. He told said that the pope had apologized and met survivors but evaded Vatican responsibility for crimes and cover-ups. “I think [his visit] has made it worse.”

Maeve Lewis, of the survivor advocacy group One in Four, agreed. “A missed opportunity. He made not one concrete proposal about what he intends to do.”

“Mark Vincent Healy, of the group Ending Clerical Abuse, said a sadness overshadowed all the official pomp and pageantry. ‘There isn’t a good side to this papal visit, which brings to the surface such horror, injustice and shame in our beloved country.’”

On Friday night, images of clerical abuse survivors and activists were projected onto buildings across Dublin city ahead of the papal visit.

When Pope Francis arrived on Saturday, he criticized the “bishops, religious superiors, priests and others” for their “failure,” but did not say that he would take any action.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar publicly responded, “Wounds are still open and there is much to be done to bring about justice and truth and healing for victims and survivors. Holy Father, I ask that you use your office and influence to ensure this is done here in Ireland and across the World,” he said.

Along the pope’s parade route in Dublin, a group held a banner that read, “We Will Never Forget,”’ and chanted “Keep our children safe.” “In front of them were dozens of pairs of baby shoes and teddy bears. As the pope passed, the group booed loudly.”

Another protest took place on the Ha’penny Bridge over the River Liffey in central Dublin on Saturday as the plane carrying the pope touched down. Blue ribbons were tied to railings in support of abuse survivors.

Members of End Clergy Abuse, which represents clerical abuse survivors and activists, “called on Pope Francis to follow the example of survivors who have come forward and take action to name clerical sex abusers and hold bishops who covered it up to account. The group wants the pope to bring zero tolerance of clerical sex abuse into force under church law, remove from office bishops who covered up sex crimes by clergy, and publish a global registry of confirmed clerical abusers held by the Vatican.”

“The time of words should be over and the time of action should start now,” Matthias Katsch, an abuse survivor from Germany, told a press conference.

U.S. survivor Peter Isely said that “victims were suffering from ‘apology fatigue’” and wanted action from the pope.

Peter Saunders, a British abuse survivor and former member of Pope Francis' commission on sex abuse, noted, “This pope is very, very slick on PR. He is very good at putting his thumbs up to the camera and kissing babies, but on the issue of the abuse of children, he has been strangely and tragically inactive.”

Both Isely and Saunders praised Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.  A week earlier, Martin warned the pope that, when he came to Ireland, “just saying sorry won’t be enough.”

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland said people want “action from pope, not apologies.”

Colm O’Gorman told the press that Pope Francis has acknowledged cover-up, but he needs to “own it.” “Further investigations need to be made and bishops held accountable, he said, and called for systemic change. Francis doesn’t need a 2,000 word statement. ‘He needs about four lines,’ he said. ‘Just the truth.’”

O’Gorman wrote that as soon as Pope Francis “stepped off that balcony” on the day of his election, he should have brought Swiss Guards into the Vatican department that adjudicates all the clergy child sex abuse allegations. They should have “dragged the filing cabinets in there that contain documentation and evidence of every case of a priest or a member of the clergy of child sex abuse from anywhere in the world and dragged them into St. Peter’s Square and called the world’s media and the police and handed it over.”

The week before the pope’s visit, journalist Paddy Agnew wrote: “Perhaps, if we look back at the pope's record in Argentina, we would not be so surprised by his failure on sex abuse.”

“In the high-profile cases of four child molesters…there is evidence that Bergoglio knowingly or unwittingly slowed victims in their fight to expose and prosecute their assailants. Victims of all four offenders say that they sought the cardinal's help. None of them received it, even those who were poor, struggling on the periphery of society – the people whom Pope Francis has championed …. Bergoglio’s strategy for suppressing the crisis in Buenos Aires – his behind-the-scenes refusal to help victims combined with a total lack of transparency – continues to be the approach of many of Argentina’s bishops and religious superiors.”

Agnew continues, Pope Francis "famously told one Chilean Catholic on an iPad video recorded in St Peter's Square ‘not to be led by the nose by the leftists who have plotted this,’ in a reference to the campaign to have Bishop Barros removed.” Barros had covered up for Fr. Fernando Karadima, Chile’s most notorious serial predator.

“Someone with a nose more finely attuned to the bad smell of sex abuse scandals might not have appointed three ‘controversial’ Cardinals (Honduran Maradiaga, Chilean Errazuriz and Australian Pell) all currently embroiled in sex abuse allegations to his inner C9 Privy Council,” Agnew noted

LGBTQI

In anticipation of the pope’s visit, We Are Church Ireland began a petition to Pope Francis “calling on him to change the Church’s LGBTQI language.” They referred to the Catechism of the Catholic Church calling the LGBTQI community’s “inclinations” as “objectively disordered,” or even worse, “ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Person, 1986).

This language “makes the institutional Church complicit in the marginalization of LGBTQI people. Under the guise of religion and faith, the Church models intolerance, breeds prejudices, and attempts to justify discrimination.”

“In very recent weeks the pope who said he would not touch doctrine indeed reversed centuries of Church teaching on capital punishment,” former Irish president Mary McAleese said, referring to pope’s decision earlier this month to state the inadmissibility of the death penalty. The pope’s refusal to change the LGBTQI language “leads to homophobia” which is “dangerous and damaging,” she said.

For the pope’s visit, rainbow flags waved in solidarity with LGBTQI people, blue ribbons were tied to railings in support of abuse survivors and purple umbrellas were held in support of the ordination of female priests on a Dublin bridge.  You can see a photo on Jamie L. Manson’s facebook. The theologian and columnist noted, “Giving Pope Francis our two cents on the Halfpenny Bridge: Justice for women, sex abuse survivors and LGBTQ people.

You can also see a photo there of a Dublin mural which reads, “We are left without hope. And we ask Pope Francis: Why is he saving the guilty? Why does he continue to cover up? Why does he continue to forsake us?”

Meanwhile, the U.S. media’s fake news continues

Other big news about Pope Francis broke on Saturday. An extraordinary 11-page testament written by a former Vatican ambassador to U.S. accused Pope Francis of knowing about “sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.” McCarrick is the U.S. prelate recently in the news for sexually abusing minors and seminarians. Pope Francis’ punishment was to remove his title of “cardinal” leaving the 89-year-old as “archbishop emeritus” able to continue to enjoy a comfortable retirement of Church-provided income, housing and medical care.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, stated that he personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013, that the pontiff “continued to cover” for McCarrick and also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor” in appointing and promoting other U.S. hierarchs. In conclusion, Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign.

Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, then first Counsellor and Chargé d’Affaires of the Vatican’s U.S. embassy said that Viganò told “the truth” in his explosive statement released to the press on Aug. 25.

Even Pope Francis refused to deny Vigano’s assertions during his in-flight news conference back to Rome on Sunday night.

So the pope’s most powerful base of support, successful so far in propping up this morally bankrupt pontificate, the U.S. mainstream media (here, here, here, here et al) immediately sought to discredit Vigano by repeating their “fake news” that the ambassador was “removed from his post in 2016 for his involvement in the conservative anti-gay marriage fight in the U.S., after arranging a meeting between Francis and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to sign same-sex marriage licenses.”

During the in-flight press conference en route to Rome from the U.S., ABC News’ Terry Morgan, asked the Pope the following question: “Holy Father, do you support those individuals, including government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their own personal conscience, abide by some laws or discharge their duties as government officials, for example in issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. Do you support those kinds of claims of religious liberty?”

The pope replied: “Yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right…”

“Would that include government officials as well?” Moran insisted. To which Pope Francis answered: “It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right."

“Taken together with his unscheduled stop to see the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Davis encounter means Francis has expressed personal support to leading symbols of the two most contentious fronts in America’s religious freedom debates – the contraception mandates imposed by the Obama administration, and conscientious objection on gay marriage,” wrote John L. Allen Jr., one of the two most knowledgeable U.S. reporters on the Catholic Church.

Additionally, Pope Francis has referred to same-sex marriage as “the work of the devil,”  an “anthropological regression,”  and “disfiguring God’s plan for creation.”  He has called the movement in many countries to accept same-sex marriage as "ideological colonization that we have to be careful about that is trying to destroy the family."

In November 2015, Pope Francis called for an ecumenical conference against same-sex marriage and gave the opening address.

In attendance were Rick Warren, "Marriage can only be between a man and a woman,”  Southern Baptist Convention's Russell Moore, “marriage is culturally imperiled,”  Nicholas Okoh, the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, “homosexuality is a manifestation of the devil,” and Alan Spears, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, “the pope’s U.S. visit could be the opportunity those fighting for traditional marriage have been waiting for.”

As recently as this past May 15, Pope Francis sent a letter to the bishops of Chile. “In the case of many abusers, it has been shown that there were already serious problems in the phase of their formation at the seminary or in the novitiate. In fact,  [there are] serious accusations against some bishops or superiors who are believed to have entrusted these educational institutions to priests suspected of active homosexuality.”

On May 24, Pope Francis said that men with “deeply rooted” homosexual tendencies, or who “practice homosexual acts,” shouldn’t be allowed into the seminary. He was repeating what was contained in a Vatican document released in 2016 with his approval: “If a candidate practices homosexuality or presents deep-seated homosexual tendencies, his spiritual director as well as his confessor have the duty to dissuade him in conscience from proceeding towards ordination.”

Since the lives of children, women and LGBTQI persons around the world continue to be imperiled by Pope Francis, I can only repeat my plea that the U.S. mainstream media tell the truth.