NORTH CORK (IRELAND)
The Avondhue News
April 10, 2019
By Donal O’Keeffe
‘The Devil works through children abused by priests’, former President Mary McAleese was told by senior Vatican officials.
In a new RTÉ documentary, Rome v Republic, to be aired this Thursday, former President McAleese says the then Vatican secretary of state Angelo Sodano, attempted in 2003 to secure an agreement with Ireland that it would not access church documents.
“I asked him why,” says Ms McAleese, “and it was very clear it was because he wanted to protect Vatican and diocesan archives. I have to say that I immediately said the conversation had to stop.”
Ms McAleese says the encounter with Cardinal Sodano left her ‘really quite shattered, that this was the number two (in the Vatican, after Pope John Paul II) in the church I belonged to’.
“There was nothing about him that was holy. There was nothing about him that was godly. There was nothing about him that was admirable. Everything about him I found horrifying.”
Rome v Republic is presented by Michael McDowell, and it traces the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland from the 18th century to the present day. McDowell was attorney general when Michael Woods, then minister for education, agreed the 2002 indemnity deal with 18 religious congregations which had run orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools. The deal saw the congregations pay €128 million in return for a State indemnity against all future legal actions by people who had been in institutions run by the Orders.
“The simple fact of the matter is that the result was that the State effectively signed a blank cheque which cost us €1.4 billion in the end, in exchange for a promise of a contribution of €128 million from the religious orders,” McDowell says.
17 years on, the 18 religious organisations have still not fulfilled the terms of the deal, and the terms of later offers made to the State. Of the €128 million the Orders agreed to pay, €4.21 million is still outstanding. Negotiations over the handover of remaining properties continue.
In the wake of the publication of the 2009 Ryan report, the18 congregations were called in by the then government and asked to increase their contributions to redress costs, the total cost of which came to €1.5 billion. Mr Justice Ryan had recommended the congregations pay half the cost of redress, with the taxpayer footing the rest.
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