Relations between Ireland and the Vatican have reached a historic low
following the Taoiseach’s unprecedented attack on the Holy See’s role
in covering up cases of clerical child sex abuse.
In language
never before used by an Irish government leader, Enda Kenny Wednesday
accused the Vatican of downplaying or “managing” the rape and torture of
children in order to uphold its own power and reputation.
Speaking
in the Dáil in a debate on the Cloyne report, he said it excavated the
“dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism” dominating the
culture of the Vatican to this day.
The Taoiseach's speech was
reported around the world with many media organisations praising Mr
Kenny for his criticism of the Catholic Church.
There is still no
sign of an official reply from the Vatican to the “considered response”
to the report sought by the Government.
Minister for Justice Alan
Shatter dismissed exculpatory comments by a senior Vatican spokesman, Fr
Federico Lombardi, as unfortunate and disingenuous.
Fr Lombardi had said there was nothing in the advice given by the papal nuncio in 1997 to encourage bishops to break Irish laws.
A
spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said last night the
Vatican was under no illusions about the seriousness of the situation
and a response was expected in a reasonable timeframe.
He said the
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamon Gilmore had established an official
and urgent channel of communication with the Vatican and would not be
responding to comments made by individual clerics in the Holy See.
A
spokesman for the Government said it would not be making allowances for
the holiday period in terms of receiving a considered response.
In
his statement to the Dáil, Mr Kenny twice referred to the dismay he
felt as a practising, faithful Catholic and warned of more reports such
as Cloyne unless the State acted swiftly to deal with the church’s
“frankly brazen disregard” for child protection.
“Far from
listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict’s
‘ear of the heart’, the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it
with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. This calculated, withering
position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and
compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded.”
The
revelations of the Cloyne report had brought the Government, Irish
Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture, he said.
“It’s
fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps,
unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has
proved to be of a different order.”
“Because 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 as
little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the
Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the
narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”
The
Government spokesman said Mr Kenny’s comment about “three years ago”
was not intended to refer to any specific event, but rather described
the cumulative effect of the Vatican’s actions.
Mr Kenny
continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or
‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power,
standing and ‘reputation’.”
Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid
Martin suggested the Vatican should respond to the Government by
reiterating its support for the Irish bishops’ approach to child
protection, by supporting the reporting of abuse cases to the Irish
authorities and by backing further audits of child protection policies
in individual dioceses.
He suggested there were “cabals” in the church,
either in Ireland or the Vatican, who were refusing to recognise the
church’s rules on child protection.
“What do you do when you’ve
got systems in place and somebody ignores them? What do you do when
groups, either in the Vatican or in Ireland, who try to undermine what
is being done and who simply refuse to understand what is being done?”
Speaking
on RTÉ television, he expressed disappointment the Taoiseach
hadn’t apologised for the failings of State institutions identified in
the Cloyne report, which was critical of the Garda response in a
minority of abuse cases. People were let down “across the board”, he
suggested.
In fact, the Taoiseach acknowledged that the State
needed to “get its house in order”, just as the Vatican did, though he
blamed the previous government for allowing “an entirely unsatisfactory
position” to persist.