Australian Prime Minister John Howard defended his hardline stand against mainly Middle Eastern and Afghani asylum seekers after Pope John Paul became the latest international figure to condemn the detention policy.
Australia's Ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See, Bob Halverson, told
The Sunday Age
newspaper that the Pope had expressed deep disquiet over the issue, thrown into the spotlight again last month by a mass hunger strike by asylum seekers at the remote Woomera detention centre.
"The Pope is a bit jaundiced at the moment about the way we're handling the immigration problem with boat people," Mr Halverson told the newspaper from Dublin.
Mr Howard, in New York for the World Economic Forum, said he had heard no complaints from the Pope and understood the Pope did not normally speak about domestic political issues.
"If His Holiness wishes to say anything about matters Australian, it's my understanding that he speaks through the Papal Nuncio (in Canberra)," Mr Howard told reporters.
"Now I'm not aware that he has said anything about the issue.
"I don't regard the policy as being in any way morally indefensible. I've thought deeply and carefully as a person of conscience about the policy, and I defend it," he said.
Australia has one of the world's harshest regimes for asylum seekers who arrive illegally, detaining those reaching Australian shores in guarded camps while their cases are processed, and now also intercepting and diverting boats to nearby Pacific nations.
Human rights groups and church leaders internationally and within Australia have condemned the policies but the conservative Mr Howard remains adamant that Australia will decide who comes into the country and on what terms.
Over 200 Afghan detainees at Woomera in the South Australian desert staged a 16-day hunger strike, with some sewing up their lips and others attempting suicide, to protest the length of time to handle claims.
Australian government negotiators struck a deal with detainees last Wednesday by promising to fasttrack applications.
Last August, when the government refused to accept 433 boat people rescued by a Norwegian freighter, Mr Howard further toughened his stand on the 5,000 or so asylum seekers arriving illegally each year, bypassing the United Nations formal refugee scheme.
The navy now diverts all boats heading to Australia, paying neighbouring Papua New Guinea and the tiny island of Nauru to house asylum seekers while their refugee claims are processed. Oxfam Community Aid Abroad, in a report to be published last Monday, was stinging in criticism of the Pacific solution.
In the report, Adrift in the Pacific, church and political leaders accuse Australia of dumping people in the Pacific, human trafficking and treating poor nations like prostitutes .
"The implications of Australia's refugee policy are distorting and politicising the aid program, damaging Australia's reputation and adding to regional instability," said Oxfam Community Aid Abroad's Executive Director, Andrew Hewett.