ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the failures of the Church, pushing the application of vulnerability theory beyond the State. Apologies ‘have been repeatedly cited as one of the highest priorities of victims/survivors of institutional abuse’. The Church has been perceived as stingy in its failure to contribute larger sums for reparations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) pushed beyond what the State had offered in terms of reforms in areas like health, education, justice, public inquiry, monitoring reconciliation, language, commemoration and memorials. The very process of staging a victim-centred TRC gives survivors a greater degree of recognition and acknowledgement for their suffering than would otherwise be the case. Employing transitional justice to address the abuse offers a coherent and clarifying analytical framework to pursue these challenging and pressing goals. The chapter concludes by asking how activists within the Irish Church might apply lessons from Canada’s TRC to the current context.
