THE VATICAN: TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore does not expect
the Vatican to take very long to reply to the Government’s demand for a
response to the Cloyne report on clerical child abuse.
Mr Gilmore
reiterated the report published last week was “very damning” and showed
“the failure of the Catholic Church and of the Vatican to work to
protect children in this country.
“The incidents and the material
that is in that report is very recent. This is not something that
belongs to the dim and distant past.”
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s
This Week programme, Mr Gilmore said when he met the papal
nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza last week in the wake of the report,
“I asked for an official formal response from the Vatican both to the
contents of the report itself and also to the Government’s response to
it.”
The Tánaiste, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, said
“more worryingly” the report showed the Vatican “intervened in a way
which in effect undermined the effort that was being made at the time by
Irish bishops to get the situation under control and to respond
appropriately to it”.
The Vatican, he said, “has to respond to us
on that. I have made it very clear that the Government considers that
those actions were absolutely unacceptable.”
He had asked the
nuncio to “communicate that to his authorities in Rome and to respond to
it. I don’t expect that there should be a very long period of time for a
response . . . and when we get the response we’ll consider it.”