The Vatican may be the
world's smallest state but even its diplomatic soul has been laid bare
by WikiLeaks cables covering everything from sex abuse
and media blunders to old "technophobic" cardinals.
Cables sent from the US embassy to the Vatican to the State
Department depict Pope Benedict as sometimes isolated as aides try to
protect him from bad news, and say his number two is seen as a "yes man"
with little credibility among diplomats.
The cables were published by the Guardian newspaper, one of
several news organisations with have been given access to the leaked
cables from US embassies around the world.
A long cable in February 2009, though couched in diplomatic
language, reads like a scathing criticism of the Vatican's internal and
external communications structures, which are held responsible for some
of Pope Benedict's biggest public mishaps.
"The Holy See's communications operation is suffering from
'muddled messaging' partly as a result of cardinals' technophobia and
ignorance about 21st century communications. Only one senior papal
advisor has a Blackberry and few have e-mail accounts. It has led to PR
blunders on issues as sensitive as the Holocaust," a US diplomat writes.
The cable calls the pope's inner
circle of advisers old "Italo-centric" men uncomfortable with
information technology and the "rough and tumble of media
communications".
The pope's
right-hand man, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is
depicted as a "yes man" with no diplomatic experience or linguistic
skills and the cable suggests that the pope is protected from bad news.
"There is also the question of who, if anyone, brings dissenting views to the pope's attention," it says.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi (the one official
praised for knowing how to use a Blackberry), said on Saturday that the
cables reflected the perceptions of the authors and were "not
expressions of the Holy See itself".
While some of the information was known to journalists, seeing it
published in official US cables will not please Vatican officials, some
of whom are named.
LITANY OF MEDIA
MISHAPS The cable said the Vatican's "lack of information sharing"
between its offices could be blamed for the bad handling of the pope's
2006 Regensburg speech, which Muslims saw as equating Islam with
violence, and the re-instating of a Holocaust-denying bishop.
Jews and many others were outraged in 2009 when the pope
lifted the excommunication of traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson.
The Vatican claimed it did not know that he had denied the full extent
of the Holocaust.
Even the Vatican
department that oversees relations with Jews found out from the media of
the pope's intentions. The pope later acknowledged in a book a that
"none of us went on the Internet to find out what sort of person we were
dealing with".
A cable dated Feb.
26, 2010 shows the Vatican balked at cooperating with investigators over
sexual abuse by clergy in Ireland. It said the Vatican had been
offended and angered by requests from Irish investigators who wanted to
talk to them.
The Murphy Commission
Report, published in 2009, said the Church in Ireland had obsessively
hidden child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004, and had
been more concerned with protecting the Church's reputation than
children.
The commission had asked
to talk to the papal ambassador to Ireland and members of the Vatican
department that oversees sexual abuse cases but was spurned.
One cable quoted a Vatican official as saying the request had
"offended many in the Vatican" and the cable's author writes "The
Vatican believes the Irish government failed to respect and protect
Vatican sovereignty during the investigations".
SIC: ET/EU-INT'L