The Catholic Church is a vast, complex organisation that needs regular spring cleaning.

I congratulate the News Letter on the reasoned, non sensational, approach taken in the report by Nicole Winfield on February 22, regarding the ongoing sexual abuse Summit in the Vatican in Rome.
Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

I am sure that most Christians, particularly Catholics, are sad when they read about sexual abuse perpetrated by people in holy orders; an oxymoron combination, if ever there was one.

As News Letter readers are aware, the Latin Catholic Church, centred in Rome in Italy, is enormous in number and spread. It is in continuous existence since the death of Jesus Christ, some 2,000 years ago. I don’t believe the Catholic Church would have lasted so long without divine intervention.

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The religion started out with a relatively small number of believers, having their human foibles and weaknesses. For instance, Judas Iscariot and Peter and Paul.

However, today, there are about 1.3 billion Catholics living on the planet and in excess of 400,000 men in holy orders to provide them with religious ministry.

It must, a priori, be very difficult, humanly speaking, to manage such a vast and complex world-wide organisation; clearly, from time to time, if not all the time, serious spring cleaning from top to bottom is necessary.

The summit is, one hopes, such a cauterisation.

I will conclude by comparing the measured approach, referred to above, taken by the News Letter today and a Dublin newspaper. The Dublin newspaper has a sensational headline, “Priest forced woman to have abortions.”

Coming from this Dublin newspaper, this is hypocritical; the same newspaper, in my opinion, looks favourably on abortion provision.

Micheal O’Cathail, Fermanagh