WORLD VIEW:Bishop Magee has implicitly shown a firm line of church authority all the way to Rome
BISHOP JOHN Magee produced two written accounts of his conversation with “Fr Caden”: one, true, describing an admission of abuse by the priest, the other, fictitious, a flat denial and protestations of innocence. Significantly, Magee filed the true version with the Vatican, the fictitious account with the diocese of Cloyne. What mattered was the Vatican. (No question of going to the Garda.)
In doing so, however, Magee implicitly acknowledged what the Vatican has been trying to fudge for years in its responses to the worldwide abuse scandals – that a firm line of authority, and hence of moral and legal responsibility, runs all the way to Rome. Vatican protestations that national hierarchies are autonomous, not wholly owned subsidiaries, are wearing distinctly thin.
Legally the Vatican has insisted both that it, as an independent state, has “sovereign immunity” and so cannot be held liable before a court for the actions of its agents, and that in any case priests cannot be regarded as its agents/employees in a legal sense.
But its unique status among churches as a protected sovereign entity, with an “observer” place at the UN, looks increasingly anomalous and unjustifiable, a reality that certainly informs its prickly diplomats.
A US cable last year sent from the US embassy in Dublin to that in the Holy See, published by WikiLeaks, reported that requests for information from Irish investigators “offended” many in the Vatican who “saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty”.
Papal nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza’s position is clearly being driven by such legal/diplomatic considerations. He has refused to assist tribunals on two occasions under the pretext that “the nunciature does not determine the handling of cases of sexual abuse in Ireland”.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore has every right to be sceptical. The Cloyne report records that several Cloyne cases were passed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or the Congregation for the Bishops in Rome. Hardly hands off!
The Vatican is on the back foot on the sovereign immunity issue. Last July the US supreme court decided not to rule on an appeals court decision in a case (John V Doe v Holy See) involving Irish abuser priest Andrew Ronan. One of his victims is attempting to sue the Vatican. Ronan molested boys in the 1950s as a priest in Ireland and then in Chicago, before his transfer to a church in Portland, Oregon, where he allegedly abused the victim who filed the lawsuit. Ronan died in 1992.
The Vatican claimed immunity under the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But the law contains exceptions – notably when a foreign state engages in commercial activity in the US, or its agents cause injury there by “tortious” act. The appeals court cited one of those, ruling the lawsuit has sufficiently alleged that Ronan was an employee of the Vatican acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law. The case against the Vatican is proceeding.
The “agent” issue is the subject of an important ongoing case in Portsmouth where the diocesan authorities are also claiming the relationship between bishop and priest cannot be construed as employer-employee, to thwart a claim for compensation from a woman abused by a priest while a resident in a Catholic-run home.
If successful, lawyers warn, the church as an organisation may be able to severely limit its obligation to pay compensation to victims of clerical sexual abuse. Msgr Gordon Read told the court: “In my opinion neither the bishop nor the priest would regard their relationship as having legal consequences.”
The Cloyne report, and Gilmore, berate the Vatican for undermining the Irish hierarchy’s 1996 abuse guidelines by circulating, in 1997, notably through the papal nuncio, a letter to bishops warning that the guidelines may infringe the canon law rights of priests and that as “study guidelines” they are not mandatory. It was a message Magee and his deputy, Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, took to heart.
It was also a clear, at the time secret, articulation of Vatican engagement and authority on the issue, despite repeated public declarations these issues were to be dealt with entirely locally.
In the face of international criticism, it would finally acknowledge as much only in May this year when the Vatican at last issued a worldwide directive requiring all Catholic bishops to draw up child protection guidelines. Some bishops’ conferences, in countries such as Ireland, already have plans in place, though clearly not enforced in Cloyne. Some – like Italy – do not have plans in place. Bishops in Belgium and the Netherlands, both facing sex abuse scandals, are working on guidelines.
Unfortunately the statement did not go far enough – it appears to play down the role of lay review boards and leaves some ambiguity on the issue of co-operation with civilian authorities.
Both Taoiseach and Tánaiste have made clear the State is not currently enamoured of its relationship with the Vatican, and may even be considering closing our embassy there. Without clear explanations of its role in Cloyne and the abuse scandals, a clear commitment to engage fully in future with legitimate requests from tribunals and our legal authorities, and a willingness to demonstrate a new flexibility on issues such as the absolute responsibility to report abuse to the Garda, it is an option that should be considered seriously.
It will remain a difficult relationship, complicated by the fiction – call it a “mental reservation” – that the Catholic Church is a sovereign state.