Taoiseach denounces Vatican

THE Cloyne report into clerical child sex abuse has exposed the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism” at the heart of the Vatican, Enda Kenny has said in a blistering denunciation of the Holy See.

The rape and torture of children was deliberately “downplayed” in order to protect the Vatican’s primacy and power, the Taoiseach told the Dáil yesterday.

Making clear that the days of Church dominance over the state were long gone, Mr Kenny declared: “This is not Rome... (but) a republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities, of proper civic order, where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version, of a particular kind of ‘morality’, will no longer be tolerated or ignored.”