It takes the Ferns Report 53 full pages to recount the stories of abuse told to them by the victims of the Church in the Diocese of Ferns. Children as young as eight were taken from their classrooms while preparing for their Communion and abused, patients in hospitals were molested, schoolboys were raped in public toilets, a teenage girl was told she would have her child taken from her if she ever told that the father was a priest who raped her, married men were blackmailed into providing sexual favours, and it goes on and on and on.

As millions queued up to pay their last respects to Pope John Paul II, Fergal Keane joined the masses in St Peter's Basilica to see a man who 'managed to make a connection with just about everyone on the planet'.