By Eamon Quinn, Stacy Meichtry
Wall Street Journal
July 26, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576467533186134972.html
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| The papal envoy to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, this month. |
DUBLIN—The Vatican recalled its ambassador to Ireland on Monday in response to Irish government criticism that the Holy See had mishandled allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
The Vatican said the papal ambassador, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, would return to Rome for "consultations" with its No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, on the political uproar that has emerged in the country, a Catholic stronghold.
Vatican deputy spokesman Rev. Ciro Benedettini said the ambassador had been recalled to help "prepare an official response from the Holy See to the Irish government." He described it as a rare measure that showed the "seriousness of the situation [and] the will of the Holy See to address it with objectivity and determination as well as a certain sense of surprise and regret for some excessive reactions."
The move follows the release this month of a report by a government-appointed commission that documented widespread abuse in Ireland's Cloyne Diocese. The commission found that diocesan officials had failed to follow the Irish church's guidelines and act on complaints of abuse against 19 priests filed from 1996 to 2009 and report them to civil authorities. The report also cited a 1997 letter from the Vatican that questioned whether Irish bishops had overstepped canon law by requiring church officials to report allegations of abuse to police.
The findings of the so-called Cloyne report unleashed a rare barrage of criticism from Irish officials and members of Parliament, who have traditionally eschewed public confrontations with the Vatican.
The Catholic Church was once considered an unassailable institution in Ireland. But as thousands of people have come forward over the past decade to report they were abused as children, its public standing in the country has been eroded.
After the Cloyne report was issued July 13, Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore summoned the papal ambassador, Archbishop Leanza, and demanded that the Vatican issue a swift response to it.
Last week, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered an address to Parliament in which he accused the Vatican of seeking to frustrate the inquiry and criticized "the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism—and the narcissism—that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."
"For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic," Mr. Kenny said. "The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation.' "
Following Mr. Kenny's speech, the Vatican said it planned to issue a formal response to the Cloyne report at an "opportune time." So far, however, it hasn't commented further on the matter—a silence that has exacerbated tensions with victims of sexual abuse and with Irish politicians.
The diplomatic spat between the Vatican and Ireland is the latest sign of Pope Benedict XVI's struggle to quell criticism of his response to the clerical sexual-abuse crisis.
As the crisis exploded across Europe last year, the pope issued a letter to Irish Catholics apologizing for the church's handling of the abuse allegations. He also strengthened Vatican rules for removing abusive priests from the priesthood and has accepted the resignations of three Irish bishops who failed to respond to the abuse allegations.
The Cloyne report followed three government investigations into other dioceses and institutions that also uncovered sexual abuse by priests and a systemic failure of top bishops to stem the abuse or report it to police. The report said that measures adopted by Irish bishops in 1996 requiring church officials to report abuse weren't "consistently implemented."
"Cloyne showed a spectacular failure to protect children by the church in ignoring its own guidelines," said Geoffrey Shannon, a lawyer who is a special rapporteur on children's rights to the Irish Parliament.
The Cloyne report also cited a 1997 letter from the Vatican to Irish bishops saying the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy had "serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature" about measures that required "mandatory reporting" of abuse allegations to civil authorities.
Vatican officials say the letter, reported in an Irish TV documentary in January, was intended to ensure that church law was properly followed in order to effectively prosecute sex offenders in church tribunals.
Contact: stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
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