Summary of the Response to Mr Eamon Gilmore, (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland, concerning the Cloyne Report. (Vatican Radio)

On 14 July 2011, following the publication of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Diocese of Cloyne (Cloyne Report), Mr Eamon Gilmore, Deputy Prime Minister (Tánaiste) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland, in the course of a meeting with the Apostolic Nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, conveyed the Irish Government’s request for a response from the Holy See to the Report and to the Government’s views in its regard.

1. General remarks about the Cloyne Report

The Holy See has carefully examined the Cloyne Report, which has brought to light very serious and disturbing failings in the handling of accusations of sexual abuse of children and young people by clerics in the Diocese of Cloyne.

The Holy See wishes to state at the outset its profound abhorrence for the crimes of sexual abuse which took place in that Diocese and is sorry and ashamed for the terrible sufferings which the victims of abuse and their families have had to endure within the Church of Jesus Christ, a place where this should never happen. It is very concerned at the findings of the Commission concerning grave failures in the ecclesiastical governance of the Diocese and the mishandling of allegations of abuse. 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 norms and procedures relating to cases of sexual abuse. However, the approach taken by the Church in Ireland in recent times to the problem of child sexual abuse is benefitting from ongoing experience and proving more and more effective in preventing the recurrence of these crimes and in dealing with cases as they arise.

2. Issues raised by the Cloyne Report

The Holy See’s Response addresses in detail the various charges made against it, which seem to be based primarily on the Cloyne Report’s account and assessment of the letter addressed to the Irish Bishops on 31 January 1997 by the then Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Luciano Storero, concerning the response of the Congregation for the Clergy to the document Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response (the Framework Document). The Commission of Inquiry asserts that this response gave comfort to those who dissented from the stated official Church policy and was unsupportive especially in relation to reporting to the civil authorities.

The Holy See wishes to state the following in relation to the response of the Congregation for the Clergy:

The Congregation described the Framework Document as a “study document” on the basis of information provided by the Irish Bishops, who described the text not as an official document of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, but, rather, as a “report” of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee on Child Sexual Abuse by Priests and Religious, recommended “to individual dioceses and congregations as a framework for addressing the issue of child sexual abuse.”

The Irish Bishops never sought the recognitio of the Holy See for the Framework Document, which, in accordance with canon 455 of the Code of Canon Law, would have been required only if they intended it to be a general decree of the Conference binding on all its members. However, the lack of recognitio itself did not preclude the application of the document’s guidelines, since individual Bishops could adopt them without having to refer to the Holy See. This is, in fact, what generally happened in Ireland.

FULL STATEMENT AND RELATED COVERAGE

Cloyne: Holy See response to Irish Government (Vatican Radio)

Cloyne: comments of Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ (Vatican Radio)

Cloyne: Arch. Martin on Church and State moving forward together (Vatican Radio)

Government not backing down on Holy See criticisms (Irish Times)

Bishops are owed nothing after years of hiding abuse (Opinion, Independent.ie)

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