Dublin anger
July 21, 2011
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny launched a scathing attack on the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday, accusing its leaders of failing to properly address a string of sex abuse scandals.
Kenny claimed the Vatican had put church interests ahead of those of child abuse victims on a routine basis and described its hierarchy as "out-of-touch." Kenny also claimed that the Vatican had tried to frustrate an inquiry into abuse held "as little as three years ago."
His hard-hitting comments came in a parliamentary debate on a government report last week which accused the Roman Catholic Church of failings in its handling of abuse allegations against 19 clerics in the diocese of Cloyne, southern Ireland.
Disfunction and disconnection
"The Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism, that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day," said Kenny.
"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and reputation," he added.
The investigation, lasting two years, looked at how complaints made in the largely rural diocese of Cloyne were handled between 1996 and 2009.
It summarized the church response as having been "inadequate and inappropriate," claiming this had compounded victims' pain.
Criticism of bishop
The report strongly criticized former Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee, who served as private secretary to three successive popes - Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II - for failures in child protection.
Politicians from across the Irish political spectrum have attacked the Vatican recently, with the government warning that the Irish embassy at the Vatican could be downgraded in status. Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore raised the report's findings with papal ambassador Giuseppe Leanza last week. Kenny said his government would wait to hear the Vatican's reaction.
Kenny said that as a practising Catholic, he did not find it easy to be so critical of the Church authorities, but said the revelations in the Cloyne report were of a "different order" to previous reports detailing abuse.
"Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago," he told the Dail, the lower house of parliament.
Author: Richard Connor (AFP, dpa, Reuters)
Editor: Ben Knight