THE VATICAN:TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore does not expect the Vatican to take very long to reply to the Government's demand for a response to the Cloyne report on clerical child abuse.
Mr Gilmore reiterated the report published last week was “very damning” and showed “the failure of the Catholic Church and of the Vatican to work to protect children in this country.
“The incidents and the material that is in that report is very recent. This is not something that belongs to the dim and distant past.”
Speaking on RTÉ radio's This Weekprogramme, Mr Gilmore said when he met the papal nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza last week in the wake of the report, "I asked for an official formal response from the Vatican both to the contents of the report itself and also to the Government's response to it."
The Tánaiste, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, said “more worryingly” the report showed the Vatican “intervened in a way which in effect undermined the effort that was being made at the time by Irish bishops to get the situation under control and to respond appropriately to it”.
The Vatican, he said, “has to respond to us on that. I have made it very clear that the Government considers that those actions were absolutely unacceptable.”
He had asked the nuncio to “communicate that to his authorities in Rome and to respond to it. I don’t expect that there should be a very long period of time for a response . . . and when we get the response we’ll consider it.”
