Irish abuse survivor praises Pope Leo’s ’empathy,’ apology after private audience

David Ryan, an Irish survivor whose tragic story of the abuse he and his brother suffered was the subject of a 2022 documentary, was overcome with emotion after meeting with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. The pope was reportedly shocked and apologized to the Irish victim.

“I’ll never forget it,” Ryan told journalists outside the Santa Anna gate entrance to Vatican City Feb. 2, recalling the pope’s “sincerity” and “empathy.”

“He felt my pain. He hasn’t experienced my pain, but he knows what pain I had gone through with my family,” Ryan said.

Fighting back tears, Ryan said Pope Leo was “just a lovely, lovely man. What an experience to have.”

In 2022, Ryan and his brother, Mark, were featured in the RTÉ documentary “Blackrock Boys,” which chronicled the years of abuse they suffered at the elite Blackrock College in South County Dublin, which was run by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, commonly known as the Spiritans.

The brothers said they were repeatedly abused by Spiritan Father Tom O’Byrne during the 1970s and 1980s. They reported their abuse to police in the early 2000s, and Father O’Byrne was charged with 37 counts of sexual abuse.

However, according to RTÉ News, the courts halted criminal proceedings against O’Byrne due to his advanced age and health; he died in 2010 without facing trial. In the wake of the documentary’s release, the Spiritan order confirmed that 57 men alleged they were abused at the Blackrock College campus.

Ryan told journalists he recounted the abuse suffered by him and his brother, who died in 2023.

“We spoke about Mark. He just listened to me. I put my questions to him. And we spoke about each question in length, and he will do everything he can,” Ryan said, according to RTÉ. “What an experience to have, it made my day. I’m so glad I did it, and I think Mark would be happy. He gave a blessing to Mark’s photo that I had.”

The pope was “so sorry to hear of my pain, for my family’s pain, and for the other survivors who haven’t come forward yet,” he said, adding that Pope Leo expressed his hope that their meeting would encourage other survivors to come forward.

Deirdre Kenny, CEO of One in Four, an organization in Ireland that provides support for victims of sexual abuse, accompanied Ryan at the Vatican. According to RTÉ, Kenny was invited to the room at the end of the meeting.

The pope, the news site reported, asked Kenny about the organization’s work and thanked her.

In an interview with RTÉ Radio 1 Feb. 2, Liam O’Brien, the producer and narrator of the “Blackrock Boys” documentary who was also in Rome, said the meeting lasted 45 minutes and that from Ryan’s perspective, it was very emotional.

“Nowhere in our wildest dreams of his or mine did we think it would materially lead to anything like this,” O’Brien said.

The Irish Times described the “Blackrock Boys” as “a story of personal pain and survival,” underscoring how in cases of historical abuse “sometimes, the scar never heals.”

“I still can’t deal with it properly,” Mark concluded in the radio documentary. “I’ve never really had an apology.”

Pope Leo apologized to his brother during the Feb. 2 private audience and was “clearly shocked” when he heard the testimony, according to RTÉ.

“Pope Leo gasped, put his hands to his mouth and over his eyes,” Ryan told journalists.

Ryan is the first known abuse survivor to meet the new pontiff in a private audience alone.

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