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	Ireland Censures Vatican on Silence The Australian July 16, 2011 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/ireland-censures-vatican-on-silence/story-e6frg6so-1226095555993 THE Irish government has summoned the Vatican's ambassador for a rare face-to-face confrontation, as anger over Rome's advice to bishops not to report pedophile priests to police reignited the country's child abuse scandal. The Catholic "seal of the confessional" is also under threat in Ireland, with priests who refuse to disclose details of sex-abuse crimes revealed in the confessional or elsewhere, facing prison sentences of up to five years. It is the first time this has happened anywhere. The Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, was called in by Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore in Dublin yesterday after the publication of the 400-page Cloyne report. That report revealed that, in 1997, the Vatican encouraged bishops to reject the Irish church's tough new child-protection rules. Archbishop Leanza was ordered to take a message to the Holy See that the Irish government believed its conduct had been unacceptable. Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who did not attend the meeting, had earlier called the Vatican's role in placing the church's canon law above Irish criminal law "absolutely disgraceful". The chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, Charlie Flanagan, called for Archbishop Leanza to be expelled, accusing the Vatican of massive deceit. The Cloyne report is the fourth damning investigation into clerical sex abuse in recent years and shows a catastrophic failure to follow church rules on reporting abusers who were active until as recently as three years ago. Archbishop of Armagh Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of all Ireland, expressed his "shame". He described the discovery that nearly one in 10 priests in Cloyne was involved in child abuse from 1996 as "another dark day in the history of the response of church leaders to the cry of children abused by church personnel". The Cloyne investigation singles out for blame the former diocesan bishop John Magee, a former Vatican aide who served as personal secretary to three popes. He resigned as bishop of Cloyne last year because of the controversy, but remains bishop emeritus of the diocese. The 400-page report, led by judge Yvonne Murphy, investigated complaints against 19 priests in Cloyne between 1996 and 2009. It condemns bishop Magee's second-in-command, Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, for the way he "stymied" child-abuse policy and resisted church protection guidelines, which stipulated the need to alert police to abuse allegations. The Cloyne diocese failed to refer all complaints to police, the report says. Except for one case in 1996, it did not report any complaints to the health authorities until 2008. Nor did it put a proper support system in place, as required by the guidelines, and it did not operate an independent advisory panel. Although it does not contain grim details of abuse, as in previous reports, the document is damaging in its revelation that cover-ups were continuing until a few years ago. It gives the lie to the protestation that the scandal concerns mostly historic abuse, before awareness was raised in Ireland. Church insiders are opposed to a new law imposing prison sentences on anyone who withholds information from the authorities about child abuse. There are fears that priests in Ireland could, for the first time, be forced to break the seal of confession.
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