The Vatican has recalled the apostolic nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, for consultations after the release of the Cloyne Report and a scathing denunciation from the Prime Minister of Ireland. Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s scathing denunciation of the Vatican was aimed at the continued obfuscation of the Catholic Church in Ireland with regard to sexual abuse by priests.

Enda said: “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 analyze 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.”

The Irish Prime Minister’s impassioned rebuke is a welcome breath of fresh air from the stench that has wafted from the Tiber and the seat of Peter. No matter if Pope Benedict XVI has met with the abused; the continued, rampant malfeasance of the church with regard to quickly and decisively adjudicating sex abuse cases continues to erode its already waning moral and social authority. The Cloyne Report shows the depth of abuse, and more shockingly, the willingness of dioceses of Cloyne to completely ignore the norms set out in 2001 by the Holy See on abuse, and to, in the words of the Prime Minister, “frustrate an inquiry by a sovereign democratic republic.”