Tánaiste plays down Vatican disagreement

BARRY ROCHE

TÁNAISTE AND Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore has played down any suggestion of long-term damage in the Government’s relationship with the Vatican as a result of disagreement over the Cloyne report.

Mr Gilmore insisted that Ireland’s relationship with the Vatican is as it has always been despite the fact that the Government and Rome effectively agreed to differ over their interpretations of the report by Judge Yvonne Murphy.

“We asked the Vatican for a response to the Cloyne report and to our statement on Cloyne. The Vatican gave us their response and we issued a statement in response – I think it’s well known there has been what might be described as ‘an agreement to differ’ about it.

“Our relationship with the Vatican stands as it always has done – we have diplomatic relations with the Vatican and diplomatic relations with any state is on the basis that you are able to speak frankly about issues, which is what we did with the Vatican.

“As a Government, we spoke frankly to the Vatican about the way in which the Vatican had responded to Cloyne. We stated our position, we heard their response and right now, we are more concerned with putting robust child protection measures in place here.

“The Vatican knows our views, we know their views and our focus now is to put in place the best possible legislation to protect children in this country and we will expect everybody in the State including representatives of the church to support those efforts.”

Mr Gilmore said he didn’t believe the Government’s failure to appoint an Irish Ambassador to the Vatican to date stemmed from the controversy, while he also played down the Vatican’s failure to appoint a replacement nuncio in Dublin.

Irish Ambassador to the Vatican Noel Fahey retired in June and has not yet been replaced, while the Vatican recalled Papal Nuncio to Dublin Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza in July and no one has been appointed in his place.

“The appointment of an Irish ambassador is a separate matter – I want to be very clear about that – the filling of ambassadorial posts and our overall look at our diplomatic service is something we are doing anyway as part of the comprehensive expenditure review.

“Any decisions that we make on that are on the basis of where we need and how we need to have our diplomatic service deployed – it does not flow from our disagreement with the Vatican over the Cloyne report,” he said.

Mr Gilmore said that he did not see the Vatican’s failure to replace Archbishop Leanza as anything unusual as the filling of diplomatic posts can often take some time. “I don’t read anything into that [the failure to appoint an new nuncio],’’ he said.

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