\u201cI told him that it took me 40 years to realise it wasn\u2019t my fault, it was their fault,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He felt the pope\u2019s \u201csympathy, his empathy for survivors, for myself and for my family and my close friends. He felt it and he was sorry.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ryan was the first Irish abuse survivor to meet Pope Leo XIV<\/a> and, accompanied by a photograph of Mark (62), who died suddenly in September 2023, he told of what the abuse had done to all their families.<\/p>\n He was able to tell all of this in a private audience to the head of the Catholic Church<\/a>. It was, he said afterwards, \u201can emotional but very powerful experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Pope Leo had already listened to the RT\u00c9<\/a> Radio 1 documentary Blackrock Boys<\/a>, broadcast in November 2022, and read its transcript. It told the story of the abuse David and Mark Ryan suffered at the secondary school and Willow Park, which prompted a flood of further allegations from other men who had also suffered at the two schools. These allegations were followed by hundreds more from men who attended other schools across Ireland, many of them also religious-run.<\/p>\n Ryan presented Pope Leo with six questions he wanted answers to but did not feel it appropriate to say what those questions were, just yet. Last week he said these would be \u201ctough questions\u201d about how \u201cthe Catholic Church had pushed the abuse issue under the carpet for so long.\u201d However, on Monday he asked the pope: \u201cWhy are these priests still doing it?\u201d (abusing people and covering it up).<\/p>\n Before the audience with the pope he was very nervous. \u201cI was bricking it.\u201d Then \u201cI told him how I lived and worked in Fethard, where he had been in 2005\u2033, marking the 700th anniversary of the Augustinians, and soon \u201cit was the same as I\u2019m talking to you now.\u201d<\/p>\n The pope \u201cwas so sorry to hear of my pain, for my family\u2019s pain and for the other survivors that haven\u2019t come forward yet\u201d. What stood out was his \u201csincerity, his empathy\u201d.<\/p>\n Ryan believed his brother Mark \u201cwould be so proud\u201d. In 2022, after Blackrock Boys was broadcast, he said to his brother: \u201cWe should send it to the pope\u2019. Mark said, \u2018Are you mad?\u2019 I said: \u2018I am deadly serious. He has to hear about Blackrock and the Spiritans\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was left on the back burner, then Mark died.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2024 he sent the programme to Pope Francis, who was arranging a meeting when he got sick and also died. So, when Leo had settled in after his election last May, Ryan contacted him. The rest was, well, Monday.<\/p>\n Deirdre Kenny of the One in Four support group joined the audience for \u201cabout 10 minutes\u201d. Both were offered gifts of rosary beads which Leo blessed. As it was St Brigid\u2019s weekend, Ryan presented the pope with a lapel pin of a St Brigid\u2019s cross.<\/p>\n![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/KIMGJKCZVZHHJIZKJGQIGDYLZI.jpg\")
David Ryan with a photograph of his late brother Mark before his meeting with Pope Leo. Photograph: Colm Flynn <\/p>\n