Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi gestures during a press conference at …
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Saturday vigorously rejected claims it sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report priests who sexually abused children to police and accused the Irish prime minister of making an "unfounded" attack against the Holy See.
Irish officials defended their claims that the Vatican exacerbated the abuse crisis and criticized the Holy See for offering an overly "legalistic" response to the scandal.
The Vatican issued a 24-page response to the Irish government following Prime Minister Enda Kenny's unprecedented July 20 denunciation of the Vatican's handling of abuse — a speech that was cheered by abuse-weary Irish Catholics but stunned the Vatican and prompted it to recall its ambassador.
Kenny's speech was inspired by the publication of a government-mandated independent report into the County Cork diocese of Cloyne, which found that the Vatican had undermined attempts by Irish bishops to protect children from predator priests.
The Cloyne document was the fourth such report to come out in recent years on the colossal scale of priestly sex abuse and coverup in Ireland. But it was the first to squarely find the Vatican culpable in promoting the culture of secrecy and coverup that kept abusers in ministry and able to prey on more children.
The Cloyne report based much of its accusations against the Holy See on a 1997 letter from the Vatican's ambassador to Ireland to the country's bishops expressing "serious reservations" about their policy requiring bishops to report abusers to police.
A committee of Irish bishops had adopted the policy in 1996 under mounting public pressure as the first coverups came to light, a year after a former altar boy became the first abuse victim in Ireland to go public with a lawsuit against the church.
The Cloyne report charged that the Vatican's 1997 letter "effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who ... dissented from the stated official church policy."
Ed.; Having insufficient true renunciation among the priests, rather the Church seems to me, an outsider, to encourage money and power instead of protecting the poor and the innocent. What the great men do, the common man follows, Krsna says, so what is the Pope up to?
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