VATICAN PRESS CONFERENCE:THE VATICAN'S response to the Cloyne report was an attempt at promoting "future co-operation and dialogue" between Ireland and the Holy See and in no way says "shut up" to the Catholic Church's critics, said its senior spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi.
Presenting the response in the Vatican on Saturday, Fr Lombardi walked a thin line between diplomatic niceties and a wrap over the knuckles for the Government and the Cloyne Commission.
The Holy See spokesman was asked if the church had been offended by Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s characterisation of the Vatican as an institution dominated by a culture of “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism”.
Fr Lombardi replied: “You won’t get me to make controversial statements on that . . . I want to underline the way the whole question has been handled. If you read the reply, you will see that it tries to avoid being polemical, in no way says ‘shut up’ to the objections .
“Rather the report wants to be objective because it proposes itself as a contribution to future co-operation and dialogue with the Irish Government.”
While Fr Lombardi repeatedly acknowledged the “understandable outrage” of Irish public opinion, and expressed Vatican abhorrence for clerical sex abuse crimes, he refuted key accusations in the Taoiseach’s controversial Dáil speech.
“We understand the Taoiseach’s sense of outrage. But there are two things that we consider mistaken: firstly, that we tried to hinder the inquiry. As far as we are concerned this simply didn’t happen. And secondly, the quote is not relevant. We can all get quotes wrong, it happens to me. It happens to others but this quote has nothing whatsoever to do with this issue.”
In relation to the Taoiseach’s allegation that the Holy See had attempted to “frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign democratic republic”, Fr Lombardi was categoric.
“The Vatican is saying here that we have asked the Irish Government just what exactly the Taoiseach was referring to and they were not able to give us a response. Therefore we feel that this criticism, namely that there was some sort of negative Vatican intervention simply is not true. It’s not the case at all. As far as we are concerned this criticism is without foundation, nor in his speech did he say exactly what he was talking about”
Fr Lombardi underlined the Vatican’s rejection of the major objections posted by the Cloyne commission and the Government.
For example, he rejected the idea that the Holy See encouraged cover-up of clerical sex abuse, saying the importance of the need to fully respect and comply with civil law was underlined “maybe 20 times” in the response.
In particular, he defended a former nuncio, Archbishop Luciano Storero, arguing that his 1997 letter to the Irish bishops could in no way be seen as “having blocked the bishops from putting the terms of the framework document into effect”. The Storero letter had touched on canonical problems, to avoid future possible problems while there was “no negation to bishops of the authority or implementation of this document”.
As for the vexed issue of “mandatory reporting” of sex abuse cases, Fr Lombardi said that this possibility was discussed but not subsequently enacted by the Irish government.
He added: “There is no way that Storero’s letter can be seen as an objection to a then existing Irish law since there was no such law ”.