ENDA Kenny will certainly not be the most high-profile of European
leaders meeting Pope Benedict this afternoon.
However, despite never
having met before, both men have been on opposite sides of a very public
spat.
Today's meeting at the Pope's summer residence will be the
first time an Irish government minister has met the head of the Catholic
Church since a series of high-profile clerical-abuse reports were
published.
The encounter, albeit brief, is also an opportunity to look
forward to a relationship built on mutual respect.
Mr Kenny's 2011
speech excoriating the Vatican's handling of abuse marked a decisive
turning point in church-State relations.
Never before had a Taoiseach
spoken of the Vatican in such stark terms.
Accusing it of adopting
a "calculated, withering position" on abuse in the wake of the Cloyne
Report, the Taoiseach undoubtedly captured the public mood.
The
fact that Mr Kenny spoke as a practising Catholic added a weight to his
critique that a non-religious politician couldn't have managed.
Of
course, Mr Kenny's speech had its obvious limitations, highlighted by
the Vatican's 25-page response to the remarks. Mr Kenny quoted the Pope
out of context which gave the false impression that Benedict thought the
church was not subject to civil law.
The Taoiseach also accused the
Vatican of trying to interfere with the Cloyne Inquiry -- a charge
described by the Vatican as "unfounded" and one that Mr Kenny later
refused to expand further on.
Flaws aside, however, he gave voice
to what many Catholics in Ireland and elsewhere felt.
It led the Vatican
to take the unprecedented step of issuing a formal recall to the Papal
Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza.
And, while Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore
remains insistent that his decision to close Ireland's Vatican embassy
was purely based on financial considerations, it's hard not to see it in
the context of the wider diplomatic row.
Rather than retaliate
against the closure, however, if anything the Vatican can be said to
have upgraded diplomatic relations with Ireland.
Like a feuding couple,
states that quarrel either have to sever ties or else find a way of
accommodating one another.
When choosing a new Papal Nuncio, the
Pope looked not to the corridors of the Church's elite diplomatic
academy, but, for the first time, to one of his close confidantes, US
Archbishop Charles Brown.
In the same way the Cabinet rubberstamps
Irish diplomatic posts decided by the Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA), the Pope usually merely endorses the choice of his Secretary of
State.
However, in sending Archbishop Brown to Ireland in January,
Benedict was giving a very public signal that he wanted his hand-picked
man to chart a path beyond the tension.
Since arriving in Ireland,
Archbishop Brown has embarked on a two-pronged approach. On the one
hand, he has been travelling the country reassuring Irish Catholics that
their church is not deaf to their concerns.
At the same time, he has
been working quietly with officials in the DFA and other government
circles to mend fences.
In this endeavour he has found a willing
partner in DFA Secretary General David Cooney. Mr Cooney now double-jobs
as Ireland's man in the Vatican.
Both men are firm in their resolve
that it will not be a return to the suffocatingly cosy relationship of
the past, but a relationship build on common aims.
While Mr Kenny
is in Rome for political meetings, his encounter with the Pope is more
than coincidental.
The meeting is part of a careful choreography
designed to rebuild a strained relationship.
On a personal level,
today's meeting will obviously also mean a lot to Mr Kenny. For any
practising Catholic, a meeting with the Pope is a cherished encounter.
"As
a member of the Catholic Church," Mr Kenny said on the reaction to the
now infamous 2011 Dail speech, "I want to see the church of which I am a
member as absolutely above reproach in the issue of this and other
areas".
He will find no disagreement from Benedict XVI. In 2010, the
Pontiff told Irish bishops that the cover-up of abuse had "obscured the
light of the gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution
succeeded in doing".
Neither the Taoiseach nor the Pope are
expected to refer to the 2011 row during their brief meeting.
There is
the issue of the open-ended invitation to the Pontiff to visit Ireland
to be considered.
Such a visit -- a key part of which would be a
trip to the North, long seen as unfinished business of the peace process
-- would offer Benedict XVI a chance to address the pain caused by
abuse and an opportunity to offer Irish Catholics hope for the future.
By
adding his support to such a visit, the Taoiseach would be giving a
clear signal of his desire for warmer -- not cosy -- relations with the
Vatican.