Abuse survivor David Ryan is to have a private audience with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Monday next.
He will be the first Irish abuse survivor to meet the new pope.
In 2014, Marie Collins, Mark Vincent Healy and Marie Kane were the first Irish survivors to meet a pope – Pope Francis in their case.
During his 2018 visit to Ireland, Francis met eight abuse survivors at the papal nunciature in Dublin.
Mr Ryan and his late brother Mark were participants in the RTÉ Radio 1 Doc on One programme Blackrock Boys, which, broadcast in November 2022, dealt with their sexual abuse between the ages of 12 and 17 at Blackrock College in south Dublin.
It led to many hundreds of other men coming forward for the first time with stories of their own sexual abuse by Spiritan priests and others at Blackrock College and its preparatory school, Willow Park.
Alongside hundreds of similar stories of abuse recounted by men who had attended other schools as boys, it led to the Government setting up the Commission of Investigation into the Handling of Historical Child Sexual Abuse in Schools last July. Chaired by Mr Justice Michael McGrath, it is to report within five years.
Mr Ryan, who lives in Fethard, Co Tipperary, recalled how Pope Leo visited there three times as Fr Robert Prevost, prior general of the Augustinian Order, and attended a special Mass there in June 2005 when the Fethard Augustinian Abbey celebrated its 700th anniversary. “There’s a photograph of him from then in McCarthy’s bar [in Fethard],” he said.
His audience with the pope is scheduled to take place on Monday and will be for at least 40 minutes. As it is St Brigid’s weekend, he will bring along “a lapel pin of a St Brigid’s cross” as a gift for the pope. He will also bring along a photograph of himself and his brother Mark, who died suddenly in 2023 aged 62, taken at The Late Late Show in December 2022.
He will be accompanied to the audience, though not at it, by Deirdre Kenny of the One in Four group, which assists abuse survivors. She will be on call in case he needs her while recounting his story to Leo.
“I have many questions to put to him, tough questions about how the Catholic Church pushed the abuse issue under the carpet for so long,” he said.
He understands that the Blackrock Boys programme has been heard by Leo, who has also been briefed on what has happened since, including the setting up of the commission of investigation last year.
Plans for Mr Ryan’s visit to the pope go back to 2022, when he first suggested it to his brother after Blackrock Boys was broadcast.
“I said, ‘We should send it to the Pope’. Mark said, ‘Are you mad?’.
“I said, ‘I am deadly serious. He has to hear about Blackrock and the Spiritans.’ But it was left on the backburner, then Mark died.”
David sent a copy of the programme to Pope Francis in early 2024 and got a reply from the Vatican saying the pope would like to meet him.
Plans were under way for the audience when Francis became ill, leading to his death last April.
After allowing Pope Leo to settle in after his election last May, Ryan contacted the Vatican again and an audience was agreed.
Meanwhile, the commission of investigation is to conduct a national survey on historical child sexual abuse in all-day and boarding schools, including personal experiences.
People taking part will be asked to identify the school they attended, the time-period involved, their experiences, any reports that may have been made of a complaint of child sexual abuse there, and information about any alleged perpetrator or person in a position of authority, where relevant.
The commission is putting legal, technical and data security arrangements in place so that information provided in the survey is handled safely and in line with data protection law and good practice. Once this is done, it plans to advertise the national survey in the media and on a planned website.
The commission will investigate the handling of allegations or concerns of historical child sexual abuse in all-day and boarding schools in Ireland, including special schools, which occurred between 1927 and 2013.