The commission investigating the handling of abuse claims in the diocese of Cloyne has said it will not use diplomatic channels to request information from the Vatican.A spokesman for the three person commission, which also conducted last month’s report into abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, said that the inquiry team took the view that it was seeking information from the Church as a body, and not from the Vatican as a state.
The Vatican has said it will not correspond with any inquiry outside diplomatic channels via the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Vatican and papal nuncio did not respond to correspondence from the commission, which is headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, when it was working on its investigation into the handling of abuse claims in Dublin.
The commission has not been consulted ahead of a meeting this week between Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin and papal nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, at which the matter is expected to be raised.
The commission is currently in the investigative phase in its examination of the handling of abuse claims in Cloyne diocese. Any request to the Vatican for files or reports sent to it by the Cloyne diocese, if necessary, would be made in the coming weeks.
The Vatican and two papal nuncios, including Leanza, failed to respond to three letters from the commission during its probe into clerical child abuse in Dublin.
In September 2006, the commission wrote to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, seeking details on reports of clerical child sex abuse sent in from Dublin.
In February of the following year, the commission wrote to the then papal nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, asking that he forward all documents relevant to it which had not been produced by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.
Leanza failed to reply to a further letter earlier this year in which the commission set out its draft findings.
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