PIC: Somebody’s Child Memorial In Temple Bar Temporarily Replaced With Message Challenging The Pope

A new installation has just been put up at the site of the Somebody’s Child exhibition in Temple Bar and it’s aimed directly at the pope.

With the pontiff’s visit almost upon us, “A message to Pope Francis” has been unveiled which includes victim impact reports from clerical abuse survivors.

This has replaced Somebody’s Child. It is important and needs to be seen. #PopeInIreland pic.twitter.com/KVrUiuiqRu

— Boring Griffin (@From24c) August 23, 2018

The message to the pope reads:

“As a signal of the distress caused by the Catholic Church’s cover-up and denial of child sexual abuse, the Vatican State Flag is being flown upside down.

“These panels depict the lifelong suffering and anguish that clerical sexual abuse has left on the many hundreds of thousands of children, now adults, who experienced these crimes.”

People had been outraged online to find that the memorial was covered up with netting, though it turned out this was done on purpose to make way for the temporary artwork.

Dublin councillor Mannix Flynn, who monitors the site, spoke out after the netting had been torn down, explaining:

"Last night the protective netting that I placed on the site at Exchange Street was torn down deliberately. This netting was to allow us to put up a new response to Pope Francis’s visit.

"This temp piece of work sends out a clear message and is in keeping with the 15-year project that we have been working on on this site.”

The original Somebody’s Child memorial bears the names of the 796 babies who were buried in a septic tank behind St Mary’s Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Main image via @From24c

READ MORE: Dublin City Council Announces Lengthy List Of Road Closures For Papal Visit