Vatican official rejects criticism in wake of Irish judicial report

(July 21, 2011) A leading church official rejected harsh criticism of the Vatican in the wake of an Irish judicial report on the handling of priestly sex abuse cases. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman and Director of Vatican Radio told on Tuesday that much of the criticism failed to take into account the efforts of Pope Benedict XVI and other church officials to prevent future cases of child sexual abuse and address past cases with openness and determination. Father Lombardi was reacting to the 400 page Cloyne Report, issued July 13 after an independent judicial investigation into the handling of clergy sexual abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne, 1996-2009. Among other findings, it said the Vatican was "entirely unhelpful" to bishops who wanted to fully implement the agreed guidelines on abuse. Father Lombardi said the Vatican was preparing a more detailed response to the Cloyne Report, and that his own comments to Vatican Radio did not constitute an official Vatican reaction. He said accusations that the Vatican was somehow responsible for what happened in Ireland went well beyond the language of the report itself, which was carefully worded when speaking about responsibility. The accusations "show no awareness of what the Holy See has, in fact, accomplished over the years to help face this problem effectively," he said. He pointed to norms on sexually abusive priests that were introduced in 2001 and updated last year. He also cited Pope Benedict's strong statements on clerical sex abuse in Ireland, the pope's meeting with Irish bishops in 2010 and his decision to order an apostolic visitation to Ireland to investigate the situation. Father Lombardi said it was unfair to criticize the church for failing to insist on mandatory reporting in a country that had not deemed it necessary to make it part of civil law. He said the Cloyne Report constitutes "a new step on the long and difficult path of searching for the truth, of penitence and purification, of healing and renewal of the church in Ireland."