The Cloyne Report, named after the tiny Irish diocese that covers most of County Cork, is perhaps the most damning sexual abuse report ever compiled. If you think that’s hyperbole, look at what Rocco Palmo, himself a devout Catholic, says about the Report. Palmo writes, “But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order.
Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic…as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.
And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism….the narcissism …….that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.
The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.
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 analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”
Palmo’s assessment is sadly accurate and will be hard for the Church to claim it’s just more of the same Catholic bashing. Remember, Palmo doesn’t belong to the cadre of media the Church usually points to when it cries foul. This is coming from a “faithful son of the Church”.
The Cloyne Report is so bad, it’s hard to imagine the Catholic Church in Ireland recovering from this anytime soon.