People Before Profit representatives will not be taking up an invitation to attend a meeting with Pope Francis. We are instead organising a public meeting to promote a very different agenda- namely, the need to separate church and state.
The public meeting, which takes place in the Gresham Hotel at 6pm on Saturday 25th August, will hear from Vincent Browne (Journalist) Clodagh Malone(Survivor Mothers and Babies Homes) Darren McGavin( Sexual Abuse Survivor) Jane Donnelly(Atheist Ireland) Carron McKinney (Catholics for Choice).
In a statement, People Before Profit said they are pursuing a policy to:
- **Open the church files on child abuse.**Pope Francis says he is sorry for ‘the little ones’. But reports from all over the world were sent to the Vatican. These files should be handed over to the relevant authorities so that prosecutions can follow. The Irish state should follow the example of Chile and stage police raids to discover secret files held by Church Authorities.
- **Prosecute those involved in slave labour at the Magdalene laundries and take their assets.**The last of these laundries only closed in 1996. Yet no one has been prosecuted for illegally detaining women.
- **Scrap the Woods deal.**In 2002, the Fianna Fail Minister Michael Woods signed a deal to indemnify the Catholic Church against litigation on child abuse in return for their handing over a mere €128 million worth of property. Over €1.5 billion of public money has been spent to save church assets.
- End church control of hospitals and medical procedures. In the past hundreds of women were subject to painful symphysiotomy childbirth operations for religious reasons. Yet the same church thinks it can dictate whether abortions are performed in ‘its’ hospitals.
- Public control of schools, objective sex education and an end to compulsory religious instruction. Catholic Bishops should not control 92% of our primary schools; they should not be allowed outsource sex education to agencies like Accord; our children should not be forced to attend religion classes.
- **End the charity model- develop a culture of social rights.**One of the legacies of church control was a block on creating proper public services. We still have a two tier health system because the Bishops stopped moves towards a National Health Service. To this day, Ireland is still ‘uniquely reliant’ on voluntary organisations to provide social care. HSE, for example, gives out €4 billion a year to these.