Pope Benedict has summoned the Irish bishops to Rome to discuss the clerical abuse scandal.
According to the Irish Catholic newspaper, the pontiff has called the meeting next month because of what is perceived as a very serious situation in Ireland.
It is believed the Vatican is keen to attempt to address the anger and shock felt by Catholics since the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports into clerical abuse.
The Irish Catholic reported the key meetings between the bishops and the Pope will take place on February 15th and 16th, and will be similar in nature to Pope Benedict's meeting with Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on December 11th, with several senior Vatican officials also attending.
It is expected that proposals on dealing with the fallout from the abuse scandal will be put forward, with conclusions offered by the pope.
The bishops will return to their dioceses for the Ash Wednesday liturgies on February 17th where they will address congregations on the way forward.
Draft versions of the pope’s forthcoming pastoral letter to the Irish faithful have begun to circulate in the Holy See, Vatican insiders have reported.
Initial indications are that the letter will not be overly concerned with the current administrative, bureaucratic and organisational problems of the Irish church. Rather, it is expected to offer encouragement to the faithful, reminding them of the crucial role of the early Irish church in the spread of Christianity.
The pastoral letter, a highly unusual papal initiative announced by the pope himself following a Vatican meeting with Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin early last month, represents a comprehensive and formal response by Pope Benedict not just to the fallout of the Murphy report, but also to the overall implications of the Irish church’s 15-year long clerical sex abuse crisis.
The Murphy report, published in November, dealt with how the Dublin archdiocese handled complaints of sexual abuse of children by priests. The report said the archdiocese had had an “obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal” and had “little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child”.
The Labour Party’s education spokesman Ruairí Quinn said the Vatican should use the meeting to announce the Catholic Church intends to reduce its patronage of Irish schools. At present, over 92 per cent of the 3,200 primary schools in the State are controlled by the church.
“The Government and the Vatican should support calls for the establishment of a National Forum on Patronage in Primary Schools. Such a forum would involve all of the stakeholders, parents, patrons, teachers, principals and others. This would provide the road map to the future shape of our primary school system,” he said.
“The answer to this problem is the orderly transfer of Catholic patronage of some primary schools to other patron bodies under supervision of the Department of Education and Science