Social Democrat candidate Ken Curtin was dropped as a reader at Mass in a County Cork parish at the order of the parish administrator Fr John McCarthy.

The aspiring politician then had a meeting with Bishop William Crean of Cloyne, which Mr Curtin described as "fruitful".

In a statement, the Diocese of Cloyne said a "cordial and fruitful meeting was held between Bishop Crean and Ken Curtin".

The encounter was described as "pastoral in nature".

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McAleese told the Vatican's Ireland representative, Archbishop Charles Brown, that the priests were held in high esteem by the public.

The remarks were reportedly made during a lunch with the Papal Nuncio last month, and McAleese is understood to have said that the priests were keeping people in the church who would otherwise go elsewhere.

McAlese's appeal follows the Vatican's reprimanding of five of Ireland's priests who have expressed liberal views on the likes of compulsory celibacy, women priests, homosexuaality, conscience and sin.

Censured columnist Fr Brian D'Arcy now has his column vetted before publication.

"In these difficult times it is the price one has to pay when one is committed to the truth," said D'Arcy.

Sources

• Irish Examiner
• Belfast Telegraph
• Image: Forbes

While a recent survey by the Association of Catholic Priests found that weekly Mass attendance throughout the country is one of the highest in Europe at 35 percent, the capital — where Mass attendance in some parishes is 2 percent — has been hit by a combination of religious apathy, secularism and disenchantment as a result of clergy sex abuse scandals.

David Quinn of The Iona Institute, a think-tank that aims to highlight the benefits of religion for society, believes it is wrong to present all of the church's challenges as being linked to clerical abuse scandals. The shift in public opinion, he said, is "driven primarily by the secularizing trends that would have overtaken the rest of Europe over the last century, and only secondly actually by the scandals, because the downward trends were in place before the scandals ever came to light."

"Church bashing has replaced 'Brit bashing' in the national psyche," he said. Continue reading

The government leader has categorically refuted that the closure is down to anything other than economic reality.

Fianna Fail's deputy leader Eamon O Cuiv challenged Kenny to admit his row with the Catholic Church over the Cloyne Report was the real reason behind the decision to close the embassy at the Vatican.

First of all, it was made for "economic reasons", which means that keeping a diplomatic mission at the papal court is supposed to be expensive (implicitly, uselessly expensive). Worse, the costs just seem to be a pragmatic and neutral explanation to cover up a hot political struggle: the sex abuse scandalsinvolving Irish Catholic priests.

But in a period of financial turmoil, economy might be a perfect reason, or excuse, for other governments to take similar steps. This has happened before.

Fr Joe McGuane warned that if the current church regime continued, financial problems facing the church could leave some clerics "filling supermarket shelves at night or on the dole if they have bad backs," and Mass attendances in Ireland would soon be reduced to small groups of old women.

His comments came after Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore confirmed the forthcoming shutdown of Ireland's embassy in the Vatican.

In a hard-hitting assessment of the crisis that now faces the church, he warned: "The Papal Nuncio knows as much about the abuse-rocked Diocese of Cloyne as a cow knows about a holiday."

Fr McGuane said that some Dublin parishes now had greater populations than some west of Ireland dioceses.

He said the Eucharistic Congress, to be held in Dublin next summer, was "designed as a distraction", with interest in it - on a scale of one to a 100 - ranking as minus three.

He added: "Priests will have to drag themselves along to - I suppose - the Phoenix Park or Croke Park for a ridiculous jamboree, and dragoon as many parishioners as possible along with them."

Fr McGuane says he takes no pleasure in his assessment of the problems facing the church - but warned that those problems could only be overcome with honesty, courage and transparency.

Source

• Independent Ireland
• Image: YoughalOnline.com

"I wish to express my profound disappointment at this decision which means that Ireland will be without a resident ambassador to the Holy See for the first time since diplomatic relations were established and envoys were exchanged in 1929. I know that many others will share this disappointment", said Brady.

"I hope that despite this regrettable step, the close and mutually beneficial co-operation between Ireland and the Holy See in the world of diplomacy can continue - based on shared commitment to justice, peace, international development and concern for the common good."

Brady said he looked forward to a time when the Government will again appoint a resident ambassador to the Holy See and that it will happen as soon as possible.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore said the announcement was made with the "greatest regret" and said that although the embassy was one of "Ireland's oldest missions" it yielded "no economic return".

As part of cost-cutting plans, Ireland is also closing the embassy in Iran and a representative office in Timor Leste, formerly East Timor.

Gilmore said due to EU targets to help restore public spending the Government had "been obliged to implement cuts across a wide range of public services" and "no area of government expenditure" was immune.

"The Government believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador," he said.

He added he would be seeking the agreement of the Holy See to appoint a senior diplomat to the position.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, said, "The Holy See takes note of the decision of Ireland to close its Embassy to the Holy See in Rome.

"Naturally, every state that has diplomatic relations with the Holy See is free to decide, on the basis of its possibilities and its interests, whether to have an Ambassador to the Holy See resident in Rome or in another country. What's important are the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the states, and these are not in question with regard to Ireland."

The decision to shut the Irish embassy to the Vatican comes after the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's representative in Ireland, was recalled in July following the impact of the Cloyne Report into clerical abuse. Mr Gilmore insisted the closure was not as a result of the report's controversy.

According to the minister, the Irish government will not sell Villa Spada - the Irish embassy in the Vatican - but instead staff working in the embassy to Italy will be transferred there.

The grand building is the most expensive property owned by the Irish diplomatic service.

The annual saving from the closures is thought to be around £1.4m a year.

Sources

• Belfast Telegraph
• Vatican Radio
• Catholic Herald
• Image: FaithWorld

The public therefore has a very faulty understanding of both documents and where the truth lies between the Irish Government and the Holy See in this whole affair.

For example, most people probably imagine that the Cloyne Report revealed that Catholic priests were sexually abusing children throughout the diocese down almost to the present day, and that the Vatican frustrated every attempt to control them.

This is simply untrue. In fact, with one exception, every concrete complaint of abuse received by the diocese post-1996 — when the Irish Church's first set of child protection guidelines were issued — related to an incident that took place before 1996, and usually long before it.

The majority of incidents took place in the 1960s and 1970s.

Therefore, even if the letter sent to the hierarchy in 1997 giving the Vatican's take on their guidelines is as bad as its worst critics say, it made very little material difference on the ground in Cloyne.

In fact, it almost certainly made no difference because we know that the diocese's child protection officer, Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, frequently ignored both canon law and the 1996 guidelines when dealing with allegations of child abuse.

That letter of 1997 is Exhibit A in the case against the Vatican.

And the Cloyne Report is right, it was unhelpful — although no more than that — chiefly because it had "serious reservations" about mandatory reporting.

Continue reading An uneasy peace follows Ireland's war with Vatican

Source

• Image: Huffington Post

In a long-awaited 24 page report the Vatican expressed deep concern at the findings and "abhorrence" at the crimes committed.

"The Holy See is deeply concerned at the findings of the commission of inquiry concerning grave failures in the ecclesiastical governance of the diocese of Cloyne."

In particular, the Vatican took strong issue with Prime Minister Enda Kenny's remarks that the Vatican attempted to frustrate an enquiry in sovereign republic.

"In particular, the accusation that the Holy See attempted 'to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago', which Mr Kenny made no attempt to substantiate, is unfounded," the Vatican said.

Simply put, the Vatican's view is not so much that guidelines were not not in place, rather it was that they were not followed in the Cloyne diocese.

"It is particularly disturbing that these failures occurred despite the undertaking given by the bishops and religious superiors to apply the guidelines developed by the Church in Ireland to help ensure child protection and despite the Holy See's own norms and procedures relating to cases of sexual abuse."

"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.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who has clashed both with the Vatican and his fellow bishops said Kenny's unsubstantiated claim that the Vatican attempted to frustrate the processes in a a sovereign state "merits explanation."

In return, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore acknowledged the Vatican's statement, but expressed reservations saying the response was 'technical and legalistic.'

"I acknowledge the declaration by the Holy See that it is 'sorry and ashamed' for the terrible suffering of victims of child abuse in Ireland and their families," Gilmore said in a statement.

"However some of the argumentation advanced by the Holy See in its response is very technical and legalistic. The government's concerns were never about the status of church documents but rather about the welfare of children."

Furthermore, having read the Vatican statement, Gilmore said he wasn't fully persuaded.

"I remain of the view that the 1997 letter from the then-nuncio provided a pretext for some to avoid full cooperation with Irish civil authorities," he said.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• AFP
• Associated Press
• Image: The Laitytude

The media events were Magee's first comments in five weeks on the Murphy Report into the handling of sexual abuse in the Cloyne diocese and in particular Magee's mis-management of the it.

"You don't agree to talk to someone giving the impression that you are being door-stepped. You don't read out a statement or, if you feel you have to, you make sure that someone who knows something about words has a look at it beforehand," Hoban said.

"You don't justify or explain, when the evidence is conclusive and the jury has already gone home."

"You turn up. You tell the truth. You hold up your hands."

"It's not brain surgery. It's just being media savvy."

Hoban said: "The difficult truth at present is that bishops are not believed or trusted. Even if they said the Our Father there would be something wrong with it."

"Old men in black suits conjure up frightening, not reassuring images. Being Catholic is the last great stigma."

He noted that "every bishop is lord in his own diocese and the culture of deference that assures them they are competent in every imaginable subject makes it almost impossible for them to actually accept that in certain instances they are completely out of their depths."

"Part of the difficulty is that they seem not to understand how much the ground has moved under their feet."

Hoban is of the view the Magee interview is a media lesson and simply underlined the problems the Church has.

"There are rules that have emerged from the experience of dealing with difficult issues . . . There are things you do and things you don't do. And the Magee interview was an object lesson in what not to do."

Sources

• Irish Times
• Cork Independent

ACP spokesman, Fr Tony Flannery said five minutes on the doorstep was not adequate given the questions raised by the Murphy report.

"While we welcome his interview we don't feel it's enough. There are many questions which are left which need to be addressed.

"We also feel that the language he used does not connect sufficiently with those involved - it's just not clear enough".

A woman of the Cloyne diocese said Magee's apology was meaningless.

"I'm not impressed by his apology. If he crawled on his belly it would be too late," said the victim.

On Monday, an ashamed Magee begged forgiveness for failing to protect children and investigate abusive priests, according to Kerryman.ie.

"I fully understand why they are angry - I let them down, by not fully implementing the guidelines which were available to me," he said.

"I deeply, deeply regret not ensuring that the guidelines, which were my responsibility to implement, were not complied with and I ask for forgiveness for the way in which I have carried out this critically important aspect of my work."

A spokesperson for the Catholic bishops has welcomed Magee's offer to meet survivors of child sexual abuse inflicted by some of the clergy in the diocese of Cloyne.

Irish Innovation Minister Sean Sherlock has however slated as "unconscionable" Magee's refusal to answer fresh questions over a report into clerical child abuse in his diocese.

"I am astounded that he (Magee) has said he has nothing to add to his original statement," Mr Sherlock said.

"If he has any shred of human decency or moral fibre he will face the media and answer any and all questions put to him. It is the least that people deserve," he added.

Magee made the World news when the Murphy Report into sexual abuse in the Cloyne diocese exposed him for as recently as three years ago ignoring guidelines agreed by bishops in 1996 to keep youngsters safe.

The report also criticised him for writing one report for the Vatican and falsely telling the State the diocese was reporting all abuse allegations to civil authorities.

Sources

• Independent.ie
• Independent.ie
• RTE News Ireland
• BBC
• BBC
• Image: RTE News Ireland

In a statement the diocese said it has sold property and used its cash reserves but these options are almost exhausted.

"Ultimately the diocese and each parish depend on the generosity of the faithful in the weekly collections and other contributions for the funding of our activities and the meeting of our commitments. We are continually grateful for their generosity and support."

Like the Dublin diocese which last week admitted it was on the brink of financial collapse, the Cloyne diocese says it is in this position because of a downturn in those coming to Mass, a fall-off in donations and the settlements it has reached with victims of sexual abuse.

The Cloyne diocese made the World news when the Murphy Report criticised Bishop John Magee for writing one report for the Vatican and falsely telling the State the diocese was reporting all abuse allegations to civil authorities.

Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny recently slammed the Vatican, calling its handling of the sexual abuse scandal as "elitist" and "narcissistic".

Next month talks begin to discus who compensates the victims, and the Irish Government is wanting the Catholic Church to hand over cash and real estate worth around NZ$2.4 billion, which is a long way short of what the religious organisations have offered.

In 2002, the government agreed to cap the religious orders' contribution at NZ$222 million, however false reporting of sexual abuse cases to state authorities means the government is now looking for a greater contribution from the Church.

Bishop Magee has returned to Ireland but is hiding from the public eye.

Sources

• Independent
• CathNews
• Independent
• Image: NJ News

According to the Irish Independent, Magee visited his retirement property in Mitchelstown, but he is not at the parochial house in the north-Cork town.

The Independent's sources say he is staying with friends.

While the Irish Police have no plans to contact Magee over the Cloyne Report, his return is expected to renew demands for him to answer questions about his mishandling of the clerical child abuse allegations.

Church spokesman Martin Long said he had nothing further to add to earlier comments of Archbishop Dermot Clifford, who is now running the Cork diocese.

Archbishop Clifford comprehensively dealt with the report publication last month and said he understood that Magee was abroad.

At the time, Clifford said it would have been "helpful" had Magee personally faced the media.

Magee the former archbishop of Cloyne and personal secretary to three popes has not informed the diocese of his future plans.

Sources

• Irish Independent
• Breaking News
• Image: Irish Independent

Fr Joseph McGuane, the first ordinary cleric in Cloyne to comment on the child abuse controversies, said that ordinary people were very angry that "justice has taken a back seat."

"The leadership has sailed us into a perfect storm and there must be a new way of thinking to get us out," he said.

"The church is in a bigger crisis now than it was back in 1994 when the Fr Brendan Smyth scandal brought down the government."

The church needs to transform itself totally and guarantee greater transparency. There is a major task ahead rolling back "a culture of cover-up and dictatorship," the Cloyne cleric said.

McGuane said that the emphasis within the church has been on authority and control from the top down - with desperately negative consequences.

"It would be a great help if my peers spoke out - sadly, I am the only one. There is a culture of fear within the diocese. Good people are afraid of the repercussions if they do speak out — it is hard to break ranks," he said.

Fr McGuane said it was clear that rather than mysteriously disappearing former Bishop John Magee should have resigned three years ago when the Cloyne diocese's problems were first highlighted by the church's own watchdog, the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children.

"I said back in 2009 that Bishop Magee should resign. The head of FAS, the Taoiseach, the Financial Regulator and the heads of the banks, they all fell on their swords. Why should it be any different in the church?"

Fr McGuane insisted that there was hope for the future, and he said men of "courage and conviction" like the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin have signalled the way forward.

"The church is finished if we do not learn lessons. It is an urgent situation — let's speak out together now before it is too late," he added.

Sources

• Independent.ie
• Image: The Laitude

Kenny accused the Vatican for what he said was the first time in Ireland, the Holy See sought to frustrate an inquiry in a democratically elected republic.

The Vatican would rather 'manage' or downplay the rape of children to protect its power, standing and reputation, he said.

Kenny told the parliament the Cloyne Report highlighted the 'dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.'

He accused the Church hierarchy of being either unwilling or unable to address the horrors uncovered in successive reports.

"Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict's "ear of the heart" . . . the Vatican's reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. . . . This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded."

"It's a failure he said that this Roman clericalism must be devastating for good priests ... as they work so hard, to be the keepers of the church's light and goodness within their parishes, communities, the human heart."

"But thankfully for them, and for us, this is not Rome," Kenny said.

"Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said: "Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the church."

"As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne report, as Taoiseach, (Prime Minister), I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic."

"Not purely, or simply or otherwise."

"Children . . . First."

Sources

• RTE News
• Irish Times
• Irish Times
• BBC
• Image: RTE News