![\"Pope](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7d62ee39-2a82-47c1-82cb-6a8c79a540cc.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe pope, who was serving as Bishop Robert Prevost at the time, told how he was confronted by a man on the street when he was in Ireland. <\/p>\n
A video of the then-bishop recounting the story is from a recording of a discussion held in Peru in 2019, where he used Ireland as an example of a country that faced multiple child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. <\/p>\n
He said there was also a \u201crapid change\u201d in the treatment of clergy in the aftermath of such scandals in Ireland.<\/p>\n
He described being treated \u201cwith extreme affection, with love, respect and adulation\u201d as a priest in Ireland before around 2005, but that after the \u201ccrisis\u201d attitudes changed.<\/p>\n
“After the crisis, never in my life, anywhere in the world have I been physically attacked as I was in Ireland,\u201d he said,<\/p>\n
Bishop Prevost said a man passed him on the street and began \u201cattacking him\u201d, though did not specify when or where the incident took place.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, another Augustinian, who is twice as big as me, defended me. The pain and anger from this man, I don\u2019t know if he was a victim or had lost his faith in the church, I have no idea what happened to him, but I truly believe it is a very important factor in the experience here in the church as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pope Leo celebrates the canonisation mass of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati in St Peter\u2019s Square at the Vatican (Andrew Medichini\/AP)<\/p>\n
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – Saturday, September 13<\/p>\n
Before he became pope, it is understood Bishop Prevost visited Ireland twice. His first visit came in 2005, and the second in 2007. <\/p>\n
Bishop Prevost was speaking part of a discussion on the prevention of child sexual abuse in the church, using Ireland as an example of a country where many abuse scandals within the church came to light.<\/p>\n
He spoke of the need to trust victims of abuse when they share their experiences and the impact of denial in responding to such experiences and scandals within the church.<\/p>\n
He also cited Pope Benedict\u2019s pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, which was published in 2010.<\/p>\n
A clip from Bishop Prevost\u2019s talk, where he detailed his experience in Ireland, has circulated online in recent days and has been shared by a popular Catholic news-sharing page on social media. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pope, who was serving as Bishop Robert Prevost at the time, told how he was confronted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,6318],"class_list":["post-20009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-pope-leo-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}