(Image Source: CPIU)

BY  KYLIE MCGIVERN

Confessing your sins. Believed to be private, right?

Perhaps not for long, in the Emerald Isle.

The firey attack of Irish Government on the Vatican continued Sunday, with the justice minister vowing to pass a law forcing priests to reports child abuse suspicions to police.

WTXF has more details.

Anchor: “The Prime Minister of Ireland says Vatican officials under-minded investigations of child sex abuse. An Irish report states the Church helped at least one bishop cover up or ignore allegations against several clerics. A spokesman for Pope Bendict is denying those claims.”
Gerald O’Connell: “The government wanted a clear response to saying it had undermined the structures of the Irish State and of the Irish Church in dealing with the abuse of children.”

The Irish report referred to is the Cloyne report, which was published in July, and revealed abuse cover-ups in the diocese between 1996 and 2009.

UTV has more.

Reporter: “The Cloyne report uncovered a litany of clerical abuse and cover up. It revealed that the diocese was ignoring the church’s own guidelines on child protection, as recently as 2009. The Bishop of Cloyne’s John Magee, finally issued an apology for failing victims of abuse 6 weeks after the report was published.”
Magee: “I feel ashamed... that this happened under my watch.”

The Irish Republic’s Prime Minister added fuel to the blazing fire ignited by the report.
CNN reports he...

“...claimed the report exposed the Vatican as trying to hinder an inquiry into child sex abuse for its own benefit and said it revealed the ‘dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’”

Responding to the report and prime minister’s attacks, the Vatican issued a 25-page response to the Irish government on Saturday.

An opinion writer for Ireland’s Independent writes...

“...it lays the blame for what happened in Cloyne squarely at the doorstep of the local church in Cloyne. ...The Vatican admits that a letter in which its papal nuncio in Ireland described the policy of the Irish bishops on abuse as ‘not an official document’ was one that ‘could be open to misinterpretation’. However, it spoils even this mild admission by adding that it could only be misinterpreted if ‘taken out of context’.”

In its so-called blaming of Cloyne for abuse cases, the Vatican pointed out that in the mid-1990s, mandatory police reporting of abuse at the hands of clergy members was not required under Irish law.

Care2 reveals part of the Vatican’s statement, which says it’s...

“...sorry and ashamed for the terrible sufferings which the victims of abuse and their families have had to endure within the Church of Jesus Christ, a place where this should never happen.’ While it is good to hear such words from the Vatican, many would agree, they are too little and offered way, way too late.”

But the Irish Examiner reports-- one cardinal doesn’t agree...

“...all-Ireland primate Cardinal Sean Brady said it conveyed the Holy See’s profound abhorrence for the abuse, and sorrow and shame for victims’ sufferings.”