Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny launched a blistering attack on the Vatican on Wednesday, accusing it of “dysfunction, disconnection and elitism” in its failure to tackle clerical child sex abuse.
His hard-hitting comments came in a parliamentary debate on a report last week which accused the Roman Catholic Church of failings in its handling of abuse allegations against 19 clerics in the diocese of Cloyne, southern Ireland.
Kenny said that as a practising Catholic, he did not find it easy to be so critical of the Church authorities, but said the revelations in the Cloyne report were of a “different order” to previous reports detailing abuse.
“Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” he told the Dail, the lower house of parliament.
“And in doing so, the Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism, that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.
“The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.”