A PROMINENT survivor of clerical sex abuse in the United States has urged Irish Catholics to withhold their financial contributions from the church.
Barbara Blaine broke off a family holiday to hand out a statement outside the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin yesterday afternoon.
In it she called for Catholics to contribute to organisations that help children rather than to the church itself.
Ms Blaine went public on the abuse she suffered as a teenager in Toledo, Ohio, at the hands of a priest who was a family friend, Fr Chet Warren.
She named him on the Oprah Winfrey Show and went on to found Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests (Snap) which counsels 9,000 victims of clerical sex abuse in the US.
Ms Blaine said Irish Catholics were among the biggest per-capita donors to “Peter’s Pence”, the money given by individual Catholics worldwide towards the upkeep of the Vatican.
“We have learned not to trust the Holy Father, the Vatican or statements by the bishops,” she said.
“Vatican officials, from the pope on down, would like all of us to try and define this as an Irish crisis and a crisis from the past.
“It is not just an Irish issue and it is ongoing.”
She believed the statement issued by Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, in which he said he was surprised at the level of abuse, did not ring true because he would have been aware of clerical sex abuse as a worldwide problem through his previous role as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“He knew how extensive the sexual abuse was,” said Ms Blaine.
