THE Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) advocacy group has said it is "greatly concerned" that CORI (The Conference of Religious of Ireland) has refused to meet and discuss the group’s campaign for an apology and a redress scheme for survivors of the Magdalene laundries.In an email sent at the start of this month, CORI director general Sr Marianne O’Connor informed JFM that CORI’s executive board will not meet with the group.
In the email, Sr O’Connor suggested the group contact the respective religious congregations as CORI was merely an umbrella organisation and the religious congregations each retain their own autonomy. Justice for Magdalenes has written to the four religious congregations on three separate occasions in the past year, requesting a meeting.
- In June, the Good Shepherd Sisters told JFM that they could not meet the group and they "will not be able to respond further".
- Later that month the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity told JFM that they "do not wish to have, nor.... see any purpose in having a meeting with you at this time".
- Neither the Sisters of Mercy nor the Sisters of Charity have responded to JFM’s request for a meeting.
JFM has written to Cardinal Seán Brady to inform him of CORI’s decision.
Responding to this latest development, Professor James Smith of Boston College and a JFM Advisory Board Member said the refusal of CORI to meet JFM was "deeply concerning".
"It is difficult not to interpret these responses as signalling the congregations’ absolute denial of responsibility in this regard. They certainly run counter to the Church’s professed pastoral mission of effecting healing and reconciliation for past institutional abuses," he said.
JFM’s US-based director, Mari Steed, said survivors were not going to go away.
"Both the Catholic congregations and the Minister for Justice in the Dáil last week have rejected our calls for justice. They deny, obfuscate and frustrate our campaign, but we are not going away. We look forward to a decision from the Irish Human Rights Commission on our application for a formal inquiry into human rights abuses in the Magdalene laundries," she said.
Ms Steed was born at the Bessboro mother-and-baby home in Cork, the daughter of a Magdalene survivor.
She was one of the more than 200 involved in vaccine trials conducted by Burroughs Wellcome, now Glaxo SmithKline, and one of the more than 2,000 children secretly sent from Ireland to the USA for adoption.
SIC: IE/IE