THE Vatican should break its silence and come clean on what it knew about systemic clerical child abuse in Ireland, Labour foreign affairs spokesman Micheal D Higgins has demanded. More than a week after the publication of the Ryan report, which catalogued decades of systematic child abuse by the clergy and their attempts to cover up their crimes, the Vatican has yet to issue an official statement on the scandal.
The only comment from a senior Vatican official on the Irish abuse cases came on Thursday.
Incoming prefect of the congregation for divine worship and discipline of the sacraments Cardinal Antonio Canizares told Spanish TV that "what happened at some schools cannot be compared with the millions of lives that have been destroyed by abortion".
He also described the abuse as "totally condemnable" and "we have to ask forgiveness".
But Spanish health minister Trinidad Jimenez said it was "very serious" and "irresponsible" by the cardinal to make an "inadequate" comparison between "two completely different things".
Commenting on the Vatican’s official silence, Mr Higgins said: "There are issues that the Vatican must address. This goes right back to the Kennedy Report of 1970 [report on industrial schools], the Vatican must examine what attempts were made in cannon law to deal with these issues."
He added: "Through the nuncio they should clarify what possible protections were offered under canon law to those that may have been guilty under the civil law. No principle of canon law should serve as a shelter from the law of the land. There is also a question of what information was transmitted to the Vatican on this issue.
"But in the end it is the responsibility of the conservative ethos of this state which allowed the Church control in areas such as education and health that allowed this to happen. These services must certainly now, come under the full control of the state."
Independent senator and former teachers union leader Joe O’Toole said the Vatican can no longer hide from its responsibilities towards those abused in Irish industrial schools.
"The religious congregations reported to the Holy See, the Pope should have shown leadership on this issue, by their silence they showed a tolerance of this matter and the congregations’ slow response."
He added: "For a Vatican official to now smokescreen further the issue of the abuse that went on by attempting to confuse it, and dilute it, with the issue of abortion is disgraceful. They are two completely separate issues and must be dealt with as such, this would seem to be a transparent attempt to escape responding to the core issue."
Last summer Pope Benedict XVI offered an apology for child sex abuse by Catholic clergy in Australia and demanded punishment for those guilty of the "evil".
A similar apology has also been offered to American victims of Catholic church abuse.
He has yet to make a similar statement in connection to the larger scale abuse that took place in Ireland.
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