Calls to Summon Popes Ambassador, Irish Examiner, July 13, 2011

Calls to Summon Pope's Ambassador

Irish Examiner
July 13, 2011

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/calls-to-summon-popes-ambassador-512690.html

Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore has come under pressure from Cabinet colleagues to summon the Pope’s Irish ambassador over Rome‘s role in the Cloyne scandal.

The report into the handling of clerical sex abuse allegations in the diocese branded the Vatican “entirely unhelpful” over its dismissal of mandatory reporting guidelines as “merely a study document”.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter said the intervention by the then Papal Nuncio - who he described as an ambassador from a foreign state – was unfortunate and unacceptable when the country was given assurances the Church had implemented new child protection guidelines.

Describing it as a matter of some seriousness, Mr Shatter said it was a matter for the Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Mr Gilmore to “have a conversation” with the Papal Nuncio.

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald also turned on the Vatican for being “singularly unhelpful” over the scandal.

“When the Irish church sought to apply guidelines to prevent it happening again, the Vatican told its clerics that those guidelines were not what they appeared,” she said.

Ms Fitzgerald said the reference to the official Irish Church policy on dealing with suspected paedophile priests as a study document ensured that, as the study continued, so did the child abuse.

The Cloyne report found the response from the Vatican effectively gave carte blanche to the likes of Bishop John Magee to ignore the guidelines and offered “comfort and support” to senior clerics such as Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan who dissented on the guidelines for alleged abuse.

The Papal Nuncio wrote the secret letter to all Irish bishops in 1997, a year after the framework document on child protection was introduced.

In it he also wrote: “In particular, the situation of ’mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature.”

Caoimhghin O Caolain, Sinn Fein spokesman on children, demanded the Government call in the Papal Nuncio to answer questions about the affair.

“The Report finds that the Vatican ’gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed, and gave comfort and support to those who, like Monsignor O’Callaghan, dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy’,” he said.

“This is a damning indictment of the role of the Vatican. The Vatican is not just a Church bureaucracy – it is a sovereign State with which the Irish State has diplomatic relations.”