Just a reminder - along with all the other groups who enable (whether deliberately or not) and then do not allow abuse to be dealt with appropriately (there have been members of non-Christian religions whose leaders have abused) - there was a children's home run by Protestants in the North where worse than individuals abusing went on, wasn't there? And I gather there were analogies to the Magdalen Laundries in Britain, as well. It wasn't just Ireland.

When the film about the laundries came out, there was a footnote somewhere, that the buildings had been converted into old people's homes, and there, both the old inmates and the nuns were looked after together. I wondered about those nuns, and how genuine their vocations had been, and how they looked on the girls who had known, however briefly, what they had been denied. There was a terrible poison at work in those places.

And when you look back at what the original Celtic form of Christianity had been like, and how those men and women had gone out to spread the Gospel - they would not have been able to return the faith to Europe if they had been peddling one so lacking in joy.

And it is not for those of us not touched by the evil to forgive or withhold forgiveness.

What an appalling mess.

Penny