When the last Pope to visit Ireland came in 1979 I was three months old. 
The enthusiasm and level of participation among the Irish faithful was enormous. His greeting at a youth Mass in Galway where he declared ‘young people of Ireland, I love you’ became a stand out moment, replayed on television on countless occasions since. My own childhood involved attending Mass at the Graan and serving as an altar boy in St Michael’s Church in Enniskillen with many of my primary school classmates. We were lucky too that for much of my childhood our pastoral leadership was led by Father Brian D’Arcy who preached a message of tolerance, diversity in the church, compassion for the complexities of life and the experiences that shape them. Even when a stream of disturbing disclosures arose that challenged the Church and its response to clerical abuse and coverup, Father Brian’s consistently strong and unequivocal demand for accountability, truth, justice and recovery for victims offered a pathway for the institutional church to remain connected with its members.
My own life journey took me to Dublin in 1999 and what I discovered very quickly was that the message of compassion, openness and truth that I had faithfully followed and listened to every Sunday did not reflect the views and actions of the hierarchy either in Ireland or in the Vatican. Like many people of faith I found this not just challenging but chilling. 
As I embarked on a legal career in human rights law I spent many days hearing story after story of adults recalling their experiences of abuse and brutal actions at the hands of clergy and lay people at the Residential Institutions Redress Board. 
Those stories will never leave me. Sine then, the full impact of church and state abuse has come through my office door; clerical sexual abuse, church authority cover ups, Magdalene laundries, the cruel operation of mother and baby homes, where many single mothers lost their babies to a regime of illegal adoptions and told they had committed a mortal sin. We have been witness to church intolerance towards lone parents, women, advocates of shared education, access to certain healthcare services, separated couples and the LGBT community.
And so when I was given a ticket to the Pope’s Mass last weekend I thought long and hard about attending. I could see that for many people of faith this was an opportunity to gather as a church community and celebrate their faith, their God and their Christianity. 
On the other hand I could see that for many victims of the Church the Pope’s visit resurrected those deep seated and enduring feelings of hurt, trauma and damage that has never been properly addressed with actions. 
So many victims have said to me that the abuse itself is not nearly as bad as the culture of cover up, the systemic efforts to sideline and disbelieve victims, to hide evidence and wrongdoers from a process that would lead to truth, justice and love for the victim and their families. 
So I ended up last Sunday foregoing the papal Mass and standing for truth with nearly 10,000 other citizens in Dublin City Centre. It was a personal choice. I am glad now I made that choice. I am sad that the Vatican and the leadership of the Church still don’t get it. Still don’t acknowledge that abuse wasn’t simply perpetrated on children by individual wrongdoers but that their many violations were facilitated, covered up and enabled by Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals all the way to the Vatican.
Ireland has changed utterly since 1979. It is reflected in all the societal changes that have taken place in the last thirty nine years. It is reflected in the fact that the people of Dublin were much more interested and welcoming of the Queen than the Pope. 
It turns out that Pope John Paul was wrong when he said back in 1979 that he loved the young people of Ireland. The Church showed anything but love to all those they have hurt and damaged. 
They have even now showed a lamentable lack of capacity to lead, to acknowledge, to take ownership of their failings and to take actions rather than deliver honeyed words. This visit was a massive opportunity to reverse the damage caused. The opportunity has been missed.
Gareth Noble is a native of Fermanagh and a Partner in Dublin based human rights law firm KOD Lyons.