Ireland summons Vatican diplomat over new child sex abuse report

(July 15, 2011) Ireland’s foreign minister on Thursday demanded answers from the Apostolic Nuncio to the country, after a fact-finding report concluded that the Vatican secretly discouraged Irish bishops from reporting paedophile priests to police. Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore summoned Vatican’s representative to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, a day after a judge-led investigation, called the Cloyne Report, found that the Vatican in 1997 encouraged bishops to reject the Irish church’s tough new child-protection rules. Gilmore accused that the Vatican had "undermined" best practice in child-safeguarding within the Church. Speaking after the meeting, Archbishop Leanza said he was "distressed ... by the failures in assuring the protection of children within the church despite all the good work that has been done" and promised to deliver a copy of the report to the Vatican.