IRELAND
The Sunday Times
August 12, 2018
By Justine McCarthy
The pontiff heads to Ireland just after politicians reveal a key Vatican official sought protection for the church over abuse claims
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, while the Vatican’s secretary of state in 2004, had reason to be optimistic when he proposed to the Irish president Mary McAleese and Dermot Ahern, the foreign affairs minister, that Ireland bury incriminating Vatican documents and indemnify the church against legal claims for child sexual abuse.
Ireland was, historically, one of the world’s bastions of Catholicism and its political establishment was generally devout. Though Bertie Ahern had separated from his wife and was in a new relationship, the taoiseach was a mass-goer who annually displayed Lenten ashes on his forehead.
In May 2004, six months before Sodano made his proposition, the taoiseach, McAleese and Royston Brady, lord mayor of Dublin, received Catholic knighthoods from the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St George, presented by Mario Pompedda, a Vatican cardinal.
The highest honour was bestowed on McAleese at a ceremony in Aras an Uachtarain in recognition of her work for Irish peace and her “commitment to interchurch and interfaith dialogue”. She had met Sodano the previous year during a state visit to Italy when, McAleese revealed last week, he asked whether Ireland would agree not to seek to obtain the church’s files on child abuse.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.