VATICAN CITY
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew
There is little doubt but that the “negative” tone of yesterday’s UN report took the Holy See by surprise.
Three weeks ago, when the Vatican made its deposition in Geneva, it had done so in a climate of cordial co-operation, where its answers to hard questions seemed well received.
The Vatican delegation believed it had managed to get across one of its key points: that the Holy See had finally begun to get its house in order on the clerical sex abuse issue.
Implicit point
That point was implicit in a remark made in Geneva by former Vatican prosecutor Bishop Charles Scicluna, who said the Holy See now “gets it”, suggesting that in the past it had misunderstood and underestimated the clerical sex abuse issue.
The man who led that Holy See delegation, the Vatican’s permanent representative in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, seemed to reflect this view when he told Vatican Radio yesterday: “The report . . . points out a rather negative approach to what the Holy See has been doing and has already achieved in the area of protection of children. The first impression is that the report is in some ways not up to date.”
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