Irish Chase Vatican Cash, Real Estate
Ireland is squeezing the Roman
Catholic Church to hand over cash and real estate toward a 1.4
billion-euro ($2 billion) child-abuse bill amid the bitterest
stand-off yet seen between the Vatican and the government.
In the sharpest language an Irish leader has ever used
against the church, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said last month
the Vatican’s handling of the scandals has been dominated by
“elitism and narcissism.”
“The relationship between the state and the Vatican has
never been worse,” David Quinn, a religious commentator who is
also director of the Dublin-based Iona Institute, which promotes
religion in society, said in an interview. “I struggle to think
of a stronger attack by a Western European leader on the church
than Enda Kenny’s.”
Kenny said the church needs to be “truly and deeply
penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied” after
three government reports on clerical abuse and cover-ups rocked
one of Europe’s most devout societies. With the focus now moving
to who compensates the victims in talks starting next month, the
church’s riches and dominance of Ireland’s educational system
face their most direct threat in the country’s modern history.
“The speech was a seminal moment in that Enda Kenny made
clear that the state sees local bishops as the Vatican’s foot
soldiers, but it’s the Vatican that is directing policy and
practice,” Tom Inglis, a sociology professor at University
College Dublin, said in an interview. “He’s following public
opinion, not molding it, but it takes an adroit politician to
know when the timing is right.”
Compensation Meetings
Kenny’s education minister, Ruairi Quinn, will begin
meetings in September with 18 religious orders to call on them
to pay half the compensation bill for abuse in children’s homes
they ran. The 2009 government-commissioned Ryan Report said
abuse in those homes was “endemic.”
The orders have paid or offered about 300 million euros to
date in cash and real estate, and Quinn is proposing that they
hand over control of more land, including schools. About 90
percent of elementary schools remain Catholic-run, according to
the Education Ministry.
“Quinn knows that control of the education system is key
now and control is about both land and patronage,” said Inglis.
“He’s now making the running, not the church.”
Constitutional Role
For much of Ireland’s history since independence from
Britain in 1922, it was the other way around. In 1937, the
government consulted the archbishop of Dublin while drafting the
constitution, which recognized the special position of the
Catholic Church “as the guardian of the faith of the great
majority of the people.”
Though that clause was later removed, Catholic thinking
continued to underpin Irish legislation. Up to 1985, condoms
couldn’t be bought without a doctor’s prescription. Divorce was
only legalized after a 1995 popular vote, and abortion still
isn’t allowed in most circumstances.
As revelations of abuse and the church’s concealment of it
have emerged, the relationship has soured. Last month, a
government-commissioned probe into the handling of abuse
allegations in Cloyne in southern Ireland concluded that the
Vatican “effectively gave Irish bishops freedom to ignore”
state guidelines, prompting Kenny’s intervention.
Prosecution Halted
The report examined the handling of allegations against 19
clerics between 1996 and 2009. To date, one priest from the
diocese has been convicted of child sex abuse, while a second
prosecution was halted on the grounds of ill health, delay and
age.
“The rape and torture of children were downplayed or
managed, to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its
power, standing and reputation,” Kenny said in parliament on
July 20.
The Vatican pledged to respond “expediently” to the
report in an e-mail sent by a spokesman, Federico Lombardi, the
day after Kenny’s remarks. Four days later, the Vatican recalled
its ambassador to Dublin citing the “reactions” that followed
the Cloyne report, in what David Quinn said he interpreted “as
a pretty strong protest.”
Eighty-five percent of the Irish population are nominally
Catholic, according to the Central Statistics Office. Mass
attendance was around 78 percent in 1992, falling to about 65
percent in 1997, according to Diarmaid Ferriter, author of “The
Transformation of Ireland: 1900-2000.” A poll conducted for the
Iona Institute in 2009 found that 65 percent go to church at
least once a month.
Payments to Victims
The government has made about 14,000 payouts averaging
62,878 euros to victims of abuse in residential homes, according
to the agency which handles the awards. A further 157 million
euros have been paid been out in legal fees.
In 2002, the government agreed to cap the religious
orders’ contribution at 128 million euros. Now, with the bill
rising and a budget deficit forecast at 10 percent of gross
domestic product this year, ministers are pushing for a 50-50
contribution, amounting to about 680 million euros. The
shortfall on what’s been offered so far is about 350 million
euros.
Already, some orders are resisting. The Sisters of Mercy,
which controls schools across the country, refused to attend a
meeting with Quinn last month. The order, which said it had been
“misrepresented and demonized,” said it never agreed to the
50-50 split.
“It has been wrongly suggested that the congregation has
disadvantaged the state in that it has failed to honor a debt,”
the Sisters said in a statement on July 22. “The congregation
has met and will continue to meet all of its commitments to
former residents and to the state.”
The order may be fighting against the weight of public
opinion.
“I’m disappointed with the Vatican’s handling of it,”
said Anne McCarron, 71, a retired nurse from Inishowen in
northwest Ireland. “The Vatican has been too aloof, I share
Enda Kenny’s anger. The church should pay more money to
victims.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Dara Doyle in Dublin at
ddoyle1@bloomberg.net;
Colm Heatley in Belfast at
cheatley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Colin Keatinge at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net
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