Tánaiste says Rome must explain its intervention

THE Government is on collision course with the Vatican after Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore demanded an explanation from Rome regarding what he called the “in appropriate intervention in the laws of our country”.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs made his comments after a meeting with the Pope’s representative in Ireland, the papal nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza.

He expressed his remorse regarding the contents of the Cloyne report, but that did little to ease the Government’s anger over the Vatican’s intervention — highlighted in the report — in which it described child safety measures the Church was supposed to be implementing as “a study document”.