The new Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has suggested Irish Catholics can look forward to a new style of leadership in a less authoritarian Church.
Dr Martin said the Church generally must avoid the authoritarianism of the past, and be more humble, although not humiliated.
It needed to act with more energy against sexual abuse of children by priests - the numbers involved were "stunning" and the Vatican's response to the scandal had been inadequate.
He looked forward to a Church with greater active involvement by its members, and could even envisage a change in the celibacy rule, although not yet.
The archbishop was speaking at a press conference in Dublin ahead of a ceremony today to mark his arrival as nominated successor to Cardinal Desmond Connell.
On Cardinal Connell's retirement, Dr Martin will become Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, nominally the second-most important post in the Irish Church, but often the most influential.
He had to learn again the detail of life in Ireland, he said. It had changed very much from the country he had left in 1969 "where there was two-digit unemployment, 70 per cent in some parishes, and extreme poverty was characteristic of huge areas of Dublin".
Most changes since then had been positive, he said, and while there was increased secularisation, "it is interesting to see how, though there is a drop in attendance, participation in First Communion and Confirmation is extremely high. It seems parents have a powerful desire to transmit to another generation the things that are very important to them," he said.
Dr Martin was speaking in advance of this afternoon's Liturgy of Welcome for him at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral.
Among the attendance will be Cardinal Desmond Connell, Cardinal Cahal Daly, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, and Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras. The President, Mrs McAleese, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Royston Brady, will also attend, as will members of the Oireachtas, Dublin's local authorities, and representatives of the Reformed churches.
In an interview published in Rome during the week, Dr Martin said: "The Church in the past was extraordinarily authoritarian, in some cases one might even say abusively authoritarian, it was actually disrespectful of people's autonomy in many ways. I think we have to avoid any type of authoritarianism, and also any type of clericalism - which is some kind of closed idea of a priestly grouping that somehow or other seeks privilege rather than being there to serve the mission of the Church."
The Irish Church would have to learn from the wounds inflicted by the clerical sex-abuse scandals, rejecting its authoritarian past and become a Church that is humble but not humiliated, he said. "I think that a Church that is humble in its style will be much more effective in today's world."
Yesterday in Dublin he said he would try to avoid the temptation to become authoritarian. "I have to find a different style of being archbishop," he said.