If the two-day meeting between the 24 Irish bishops and the pope was not about people such as Michael O'Brien, Marie Collins and Andrew Madden and Christine Buckley, then what was it about at all?

The four have come to symbolise the pain and suffering and, more recently, the campaigning courage of survivors of clerical abuse, whether in church-run institutions or by priests who found easy and willing shelter for their crimes from their superiors.

They don't want retribution. They want change. They want tangible evidence that the church's leadership isn't some kind of club that talks the language of a club and closes ranks to protect its members, but is instead a community that cares for and listens to those who believe in its values and moral teachings.

Their reaction to the Catholic church's version of a political summit may not be impartial, and it may ask for action that is not within the strict legal framework within which the church works, but it is important. The disappointment they felt at the Pope's statement after his meeting with the bishops shows there was no recognition at any level of the hierarchy's complicity in institutional abuse in the past.

Even Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, to whom victims looked as a beacon of understanding and empathy, seems to have moved back into the hierarchical fold.

His meeting with victims on his return from Rome did not go well. The archbishop may be right to say that reform of the church is "a process" and people need to be patient. But at the moment there is no clear picture of where that process is taking the church.

Is the unity called for by the Pope the sound of doors closing and archives and records being re-sealed? Nothing at the moment would lead victims and members of the Catholic church to believe otherwise.

Those 24 elderly men who met the Pope in Rome last week have done nothing to rejuvenate faith in this country. If anything, all the signs are pointing in a very different direction – the alienation of an entire younger generation.