Sometimes, a picture can tell more than a thousand words.

The picture of Pope Francis speaking to journalists on the flight back to Rome on Sunday, spoke of a deeply-troubled Pope.

This can also be confirmed by another photo: of a largely deserted Phoenix Park for the Pope’s final Mass on Sunday with just 130,000 turning up where Pope John Paul drew 1.25 million in 1979.

That was a different time: Ireland in 2018 is a vastly changed country and church attendance, previously a must on every Sunday, has disintegrated in the wake of the abortion referendum, inroads by secularism and most of all by the countless stories of clerical abuse.

The Pope’s visit came in the wake of revelations from the US where police investigations have uncovered thousands of cases of clerical and paedophile abuse.

In fact, it would seem the Pope spoke of little else but apologise, apologise, apologise for the huge mountain of abuse disfiguring the church.

On the return flight from Ireland, the press asked the pope for a comment on the harsh letter of the former US Nuncio Carlo Viganò, accusing him of not having acted immediately when he learned of the abuses committed by former Cardinal McCarrick, asking him to resign. 

The Pope replied:
“I read that statement this morning.” 
“Read it carefully and draw your own conclusions. I won't say a word about it. I think the statement speaks for itself and you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions. ”

The pope said that as soon as someone detects an abuse, he should quickly inform a court, a bishop or his parish priest, and asked the press not to condemn without proof, as they did, unfortunately, with three priests from Spain.

“These men were condemned by the local media before justice and so your work is very delicate. You must accompany, you must say what happens, but with the legal presumption of innocence, not with the legal presumption of guilt. ”

The pope, with a tired face, commented on some moments of his intense trip to Ireland. For example, his encounter with victims and his request for forgiveness for the abuses committed by people in the Church. 

“I think it was necessary to listen to these eight people. And from this meeting came the proposal. I made it myself. They accepted it and helped me to do it, to ask for forgiveness today at Mass, but about concrete things.

“It was painful for me but it was also a comfort to be able to help clarify these things.”

Another thorny question was what a parent should do if his son or daughter tells them they are in a homosexual relationship. “I would never say that silence is a remedy. Ignoring the homosexual son or daughter is a lack of fatherhood and motherhood. You are my son, you are my daughter, you are, I am your father, your mother. Let's talk about it. And if they, father and mother, can't handle it, ask for help, but always with dialogue. Because that son and daughter have a right to a family. And this person's family... He's not to be kicked out of the family. This is a serious challenge that puts fatherhood and motherhood to the test.”

The letter by Mgr Vigano (10 pages long) dates some months back but it was made public on the eve of the Pope’s trip to Ireland in the midst of a global tsunami on clergy abuse.

It is clear there is a conspiracy afoot, which would want the Pope to resign (thus following Benedict into retirement) and getting a more conservative Pope as certain areas of the church, especially in the US, have long been clamouring for.

But there is more. Mgr Vigano’s personal lifestyle is far removed from that of the Pope. He kept a luxurious apartment inside the Vatican while he was Nuncio in Washington and returned to it when he returned to Rome. He was dislodged from it on the Pope’s express orders who then ordered him to return to his native diocese.

This put paid to all his ambitions – to become the Governor of the Vatican, a cardinal, with connections to the Vatican bank. Hence his anger and spirit of revenge against the Pope.

Enough said, as the Pope said. If the Pope knew of the abuses by the elderly cardinal, Vigano too knew of them and he too covered them up.