Survivors of sexual and physical abuse in schools run by the Catholic church in Ireland have demanded a meeting with Pope Francis during his visit to the country in the summer to discuss compensation.

The Irish Catholic church has invited the pontiff to a religious conference in August. It will be the first papal visit to Ireland since John Paul II’s tour in 1979. The Guardian has seen a letter from the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca), in which the campaign group calls for a meeting with Francis to ask why Catholic religious orders have not paid out more in compensation. The letter has been sent to archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, asking him to pass on their request to the Vatican.

Soca is angry about a deal between the Catholic church and the Irish government in 2002 that resulted in the taxpayer footing most of the bill for compensating those abused in religious institutions. The deal resulted in the church having to pay out €128m of a €1.3bn compensation bill.(theguardian)…[+]