Letter to bishops caused controversy

THE Vatican became embroiled in the latest Irish Church scandal after revelations about a 1997 letter from the then papal nuncio Archbishop Luciano Storero to Irish bishops, a year after reporting guidelines were enforced to enhance child protection.

The correspondence stated that the bishops’ policy was “merely a discussion document” and that the Vatican had serious moral and canon reservations about mandatory reporting of clerical abuse.

But the Vatican says that taken out of context, the comments in the letter to Irish bishops “could be open to misinterpretation, giving rise to understandable criticism”.

It said the description of the bishops’ policy as a study document was not a dismissal of the serious efforts being undertaken to address the child abuse problem.

It said senior Church figures wanted to ensure that “nothing contained in it would give rise to difficulties should appeals be lodged to the Holy See”.

The Holy See also denied that bishops sought recognition from Rome for its so-called framework document. “In the light of the findings of the Cloyne report, the basic difficulty with regard to child protection in that diocese seems to have arisen not from the lack of recognition for the guidelines of the framework document but from the fact that, while the diocese claimed to follow the guidelines, in reality it did not,” the Vatican said.

The Holy See said the response of the Congregation for the Clergy, through Archbishop Storero, was not a rejection of the framework document, but an invitation to bishops to re-examine it carefully.

But Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore branded the arguments put forward by the Vatican legalistic and technical.

“The Government’s concern was never about the status of the Church documents but rather about the welfare of children,” Mr Gilmore said.

“In relation to the Framework Document, I remain of the view that the 1997 letter from the then nuncio provided a pretext for some to avoid full cooperation with the Irish civil authorities.”

The Vatican also said the Congregation was not forbidding mandatory reporting, “or in any way encouraging individuals, including clerics, not to cooperate with the Irish civil authorities, let alone disobey Irish civil law”.

The Vatican said that as the Government had not made mandatory reporting of suspected abuse cases law at that time, it was difficult to know how concerns raised in Archbishop’s Storero’s letter could be construed as having subverted Irish law.

The Government has committed to tough new child protection measures in the wake of Cloyne, including making it an offence to withhold information about crimes against children and introducing new vetting to allow “soft information” transfers.