IRELAND
Irish Times
Sydney diocese behind senior Vatican appointment rejects McAleese claim of ‘old boys’ club’
Joe Humphreys
Wed, Jun 18, 2014
Claims by former president Mary McAleese that a recent senior appointment in the Vatican was evidence of an “old boys’ club” has been rejected by a spokeswoman for the Australian cardinal involved.
In a public interview at UCD on Monday, Ms McAleese criticised the way in which Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest ranking Catholic, had appointed the business manager of his archdiocese to a new financial oversight post in Rome.
“That job was not openly advertised,” she said. “I am making no point about the man’s qualifications; I understand he is exceptionally well qualified. That is not the point.
“Here was an opportunity to introduce a process in which people who had necessary qualifications could put themselves forward and we would get – through a transparent process – the best person for the job, who might have been a man, or a woman, it could have been somebody from Kurdistan or somebody from Ireland, or it could have been a gentleman from Sydney.
“But it just looks to me like the gravitational pull of old boys’ clubs is going to need more than mere words which say ‘we have to do something about it’.”
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