THE PAPAL nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza has been requested to attend a meeting with Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin at Iveagh House in Dublin next week.
In a brief statement last night, Mr Martin said he would be meeting the nuncio “to discuss issues surrounding the report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation”. This would include “the commission’s findings as well as the issue of the co-operation of the nuncio and the Holy See with the commission”, he said.
It also emerged yesterday that, on Wednesday, Dr Leanza called on the secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, David Cooney, at Iveagh House. The meeting was at the nuncio’s request. No details of what took place have been released.
In the Dáil yesterday, Fine Gael’s spokesman on children Alan Shatter said it was “a scandal” that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Vatican “relied on diplomatic protocol to avoid providing information to the Murphy commission”.
As regards the papal nuncio, he said “no issue of protocol prevented his responding to the Murphy commission by letter, even as a matter of courtesy. If he personally had no documentation or information to furnish to it, he could have said so. He could also have facilitated the work of the commission by asking his predecessor what assistance he could give to it”.
Mr Shatter called for the nuncio to be brought before a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children “to address the issues raised by the Murphy commission both with him and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”.
He also suggested that the papal nuncio should no longer be dean of the diplomatic corps in this State, as he has been. The position should be held by the longest-serving ambassador to Ireland, as elsewhere, he said. The Labour Party’s Michael D Higgins said it was “absurd” the nuncio should be dean of the diplomatic corps. Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke spoke of the “discourtesy” of the nuncio “parading around Ireland in his wonderful glitzy clothes but not replying to letters . . .”
Meanwhile, members of the family of a deceased man who had alleged abuse in Limerick have called for the remit of the Murphy commission to be extended to that diocese.
Peter McCloskey (37) took his own life on April 1st, 2006, two days after a bruising encounter with representatives of Limerick diocese. He alleged that Fr Denis Daly, a priest ordained for Sydney who served in Limerick from 1978 until his death in 1987, abused him in 1980 and 1981.
Yesterday, Peter McCloskey’s mother Mary, father Aidan, sister Aida and brother Joseph issued a lengthy statement saying publication of the Murphy report “resonated deeply within our family”.
In a letter to The Irish Timestoday, Andrew Madden, who was abused by Ivan Payne when he was an altar boy in Dublin's Cabra parish, calls for the resignation of all five serving bishops named in the Murphy report.