PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
SISTER STANISLAUS Kennedy has expressed her shock and shame at abuses disclosed in the Ryan report in institutions run by her congregation.
“As a Sister of Charity I am ashamed, shocked and horrified and I am desperately sad and sorry, as I know all the other Sisters of Charity are too, that these abuses took place and that these heinous crimes were committed in one of our institutions [St Joseph’s industrial school, Kilkenny],” she said yesterday.
Speaking at a conference in Dublin on Justice and the Downturn, which was organised by the Sisters of Charity, she continued, “all over the country children entrusted to the care of religious congregations, ours included, suffered enormously in a sickening abuse of power and position and a scandalous exploitation of vulnerability, for which there is no excuse”.
Speaking at the same conference President Mary McAleese noted “there is a candle burning here today, lit earlier this morning when you held a minute’s silence in commemoration of those whose childhood experiences of institutional abuse are so graphically set out in the Ryan report.
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