The police who removed the protestors were not the Swiss Guard, nor the Vatican gendarmes, but the Italian police. The piazza is Vatican territory, but it is policed, by long standing arrangement, by the Italian forces of law and order. The action of the police was fully supported by the Vatican itself. As Fr Federico Lombardi is reported to have said: “Considering the actions undertaken and the language used, these Indignados evidently wanted to use the piazza in an improper way, not in keeping with the spirit of the place and it was therefore considered just and opportune to move them out with the co-operation of the police.”

The actions in question are presumably the assualt on the Christmas tree, the fact that one of the protestors was dressed up in a mock-papal costume, and that the Indignados were shouting things like “The Pope is a criminal!” and “The Vatican should pay taxes!”, as well as “The Church is corrupt!”

Fr Lombardi’s point is one that all Catholics should share. The piazza is a sacred space, frequently used for religious worship, and as such no place for political demonstrations. In fact any attempted political demonstration in either the piazza or the Aula Paolo Sesto, the huge audience hall nearby, is routinely quoshed.

Back in 1978, when John Paul II was about to be elected, some supporters of Archbishop Lefevre attempted, or so the story goes, to unfurl a banner that read “Questa volta, un papa cattolico.” (“This time, let it be a Catholic Pope.”) They did not get very far. More recently a well known female British theologian tried to smuggle a placard into a Papal audience with the words to the effect that British Catholics wanted female ordination: she was jumped on by the Swiss Guard, or so I was told. Again, another Catholic feminist whose name escapes me wished to demonstrate on the occasion of some Synod, and she and her supporters were allowed to put a banner across a street some blocks away in the Prati district, but not in the piazza itself. When the late Georg Haider turned up at the end of the last Holy Year, so did some protestors, but they were barred from entering the Via della Conciliazione (the road that leads up to the piazza); an ugly stand off ensued.

It seems to me that the zero tolerance policy of demonstrations in the Vatican is the only one possible. If it were not in force, given that St Peter’s Square is the world’s most famous piazza, then it would never be free from protestors. Incidentally, the Indignados have set up camp outside the Lateran, which is Rome’s Cathedral. Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano is the usual locus of left wing demonstrations in the city. Rome is the focus of many manifestazioni (as they are called): when I lived there many a Saturday was taken up by busloads of people from all over Italy coming to march through the capital, much to the indignation of the locals who found the disruption irritating. Not only did the traffic come to a standstill, but the demonstrators would routinely deface buildings with their slogans, using their spraypaint under the very eyes of the police. (Rome and graffiti, don’t get me started…..) My guess is that most Romans will see the Indignados in a similar light.

What do the Indignados want? According to the Italian press, one of the few to speak Italian said:

“Siamo venuti a manifestare qui per riappropriarci di una piazza che come tutte le altre deve essere del popolo. Il nostro è stato anche un gesto simbolico per sottolineare che ‘l’istituzione-Vaticano’ ha tante ricchezze e non paga le tasse, non paga la crisi”

This translates as: “We have come to demonstrate here to take possession again of a piazza which like all the others ought to belong to the people. Ours is also a symbolic gesture to underline that the Vatican institution has great wealth and does not pay tax, and is not paying for the crisis.”

This is standard Spartism, but it is the last bit that puzzles me. Why should the Vatican pay for the crisis, and what does that mean in practical terms, anyway? It is also highly ironic because if people had listened to the Vatican , there would not have been any debt crisis in the first place.

The Vatican’s response, published on Saturday, says that Kenny “made no attempt to substantiate” this allegation, which it calls “unfounded”. It continues: “When asked, a government spokesperson clarified that Mr Kenny was not referring to any specific incident.”

The Vatican also notes that the reports “contain no evidence to suggest that the Holy See meddled in the internal affairs of the Irish state”. It denies that it sought to interfere with any Irish civil processes.

Kenny’s was a serious and clearly defined accusation: he said that, as recently as 2008, the Vatican attempted to frustrate an Irish inquiry into child abuse. Naturally, this statement grabbed headlines all over the world.

Yet it now seems that his most eye-catching allegation has little basis in fact. This should be deeply embarrassing for any statesman. Nor will the cause of child protection be served well by being so slipshod with the facts.

However, the Taoiseach said on Tuesday that his central accusation “still stands”, saying: “This was a statutory commission of enquiry and as such nothing less than full co-operation is required. And anything less than full co-operation, in my view, is unwarranted interference.”

This is clearly a reference to Judge Yvonne Murphy’s attempts to obtain assistance from the Vatican. However, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin – who has vocally called for an explanation of the Taoiseach’s accusation – last weekend referred to that same incident on RTE radio, saying that the Holy See actually said “it would co-operate” and that “very often in the news reporting that last sentence is left out. Why did the Irish government not follow up or insist in some way that this co-operation takes place? That is a question which has to be answered on the Irish side.”

The Taoiseach has yet to provide any evidence that his most extraordinary accusation is true.

“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.”

The Taoiseach was moving an all-party motion that “deplores the Vatican’s intervention which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish state and the Irish bishops”.

As Ireland is a 90 per cent Catholic country, you might assume that there could be some political risk in so eviscerating the Holy See. Yet Kenny is in fact playing to gallery: his speech merely reflects the ferocious public anger at the Catholic Church.

In the wake of the publication of the Cloyne report last week, senior Irish politicians have called for the expulsion of the papal nuncio to Ireland. The Irish government, meanwhile, has promised to introduce laws requiring priests to break the seal of confession to report confessions of abuse to the civil authorities, with penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment for those who fail to do so.

In all this, some see signs of hysteria, such as the ever-contrary columnist Kevin Myers, who last week sardonically suggested: “As the next step in the current calm and rational debate on child protection, what about this: why don’t we kick a Catholic priest to death every day?” Although Mr Kenny’s speech was sympathetic to “the good priests” – now effectively in the role of “the good German” in the 1930s. Kenny said: “
This Roman clericalism must be devastating for good priests, some of them old, others struggling to keep their humanity – even their sanity – as they work so hard to be the keepers of the Church’s light and goodness within their parishes, communities – the human heart.”

Ireland has seen heartbreaking reports into child abuse before. So what makes the Cloyne report so different? Let the Taoiseach inform you:

“After the Ryan and Murphy Reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. 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.”

The charge against the Vatican is quite specific: it relates to the Cloyne report’s finding that the Vatican’s 1997 response to the Irish bishops’ proposed norms for dealing with child abuse cases was “entirely unhelpful”.

In early 1996 the Irish bishops had drawn up the “Framework Document” for dealing with child abuse cases. It required the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse to the civil authorities in Ireland.

The Cloyne report cites a 1997 letter by the then nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, summarising the concerns of the Congregation for Clergy regarding the Framework Document. The letter said:, “In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature,” and referred to the guidelines as “merely a study document”. The Cloyne report found that: “This effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who … dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy.”

Bishop Magee of Cloyne was one such bishop. During his tenure, between 1996 to 2008, only six of 15 reportable complaints of abuse were in fact reported to police by the diocese.

It was this finding that caused the Taoiseach’s comments that “the law of the land should not be stopped by a collar or a crozier” and MP Charlie Flanagan’s call for the expulsion of the papal nuncio, on the basis that “The Vatican has broken the law in Ireland.”

However, did the Vatican’s 1997 letter really amount to a breach of Irish law?

The Irish state awaits a formal Vatican response, but Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, the director of the Holy See Press Office, has issued a statement which he emphasised was not “an official response from the Holy See”.

He argues that “there is absolutely nothing in the [1997] letter that is an invitation to disregard the laws of the country. During the same period, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, in a meeting with the Irish bishops stated: ‘The Church, especially through its pastors, should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice… while, at the same time, she should move forward with her own canonical procedures.’”

He notes that “the objection the letter referred to regarded the obligation to provide information to civil authorities (‘mandatory reporting’). It did not object to any civil law to that effect, because it did not exist in Ireland at that time…”

This is true: there was no such law at the time. Therefore the accusations that the Vatican’s 1997 letter broke the law in Ireland are probably false – leaving aside the morality or wisdom of the intervention.

Fr Lombardi continues:

“Therefore, the severity of certain criticisms of the Vatican are curious, as if the Holy See was guilty of not having given merit under canon law to norms which a state did not consider necessary to give value under civil law. In attributing grave responsibility to the Holy See for what happened in Ireland, such accusations seem to go far beyond what is suggested in the report itself (which uses a more balanced tone in the attribution of responsibility) and demonstrate little awareness of what the Holy See has actually done over the years to help effectively address the problem.”

Fr Lombardi’s somewhat legalistic defence of the Holy See’s 1997 intervention was met with short shrift from Justice Minister Alan Shatter, who on RTE radio yesterday called the comments “unfortunate and disingenuous”.

Mr Shatter said: “The Cloyne report is very clear in saying that there could be no doubt that the letter that the papal nuncio sent in 1997 greatly strengthened the position of these in Cloyne who didn’t approve of the Church’s Framework Document for the protection of children.”

He also said that the letter made it very clear that the papal nuncio and the Congregation of the Clergy regarded the Framework Document was “a mere study. It cautioned against mandatory reporting. It essentially laid down a marker that where there was an allegation of child sexual abuse, if in compliance with the framework document, a member of the clergy in Ireland reported the matter directly to the civil authorities it clearly indicated that that could be contrary to both moral and canonical law”.

It is perhaps significant that, unlike some of his colleagues, Shatter – himself a formidable lawyer – stopped short of saying that the papal nuncio’s 1997 letter actually broke Irish law.

Even if there is some technical merit in Fr Lombardi’s defensive statement, does it not in itself reflect the “gimlet eye of a canon lawyer”, in Mr Kenny’s memorable phrase?

For the truly substantial questions remain unanswered: did the papal nuncio’s 1997 letter reflect an attitude of greater concern for clergy than for abused children? Did some in the Vatican intentionally hamper those bishops who wanted the truth to be aired?

The motion before the Dáil yesterday asked: did the Vatican’s intervention “contribute to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish state and the Irish bishops”?

The motion was carried.

The documents also showed that Bishop Morris asked Vatican congregations for more time to resign because he was dealing with a protracted case involving sexual abuse.

Pope Benedict appointed Brisbane Auxiliary Bishop Brian Finnigan as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Toowoomba in northern Queensland to replace Bishop Morris, who was ordained bishop of Toowoomba in 1993.

In a letter to Bishop Finnigan this week Australia’s bishops expressed their support and said they had spent much time at their recent meeting discussing the events surrounding Bishop Morris’s removal, a process they called “difficult and distressing”. They reaffirmed their commitment to the Pope’s decision and said they would continue discussions about the process when they visited the Vatican later this year for their five-yearly “ad limina” visit.

Pope Benedict’s removal of Bishop Morris, 67, came after more than a decade of conflict between the prelate and the Vatican, according to documents obtained by The Record.

A document prepared by Fr Peter Schultz, Toowoomba’s judicial vicar, and Fr Peter Dorfield, former vicar general of the diocese, is an addendum to a seven-page defence of the prelate sent last month to priests, leaders and the heads of Christian denominations in the Toowoomba region.

It reveals that the conflict originally stemmed from Bishop Morris establishing guidelines for the use of general absolution within the celebration of Communal Rites of Reconciliation, which were in conflict with Pope John Paul II’s 2002 apostolic letter Misericordia Dei (“Mercy of God”). It also said the bishop’s “relaxed and open style” was generally welcomed in the diocese, but a “small but vocal minority … found fault with nearly every action he took and decision he made”.

The document said there were “some places” where there has been “a tendency to abandon individual confession and wrongly resort to ‘general’ or ‘communal’ absolution”.

Sources in Toowoomba told The Record that general absolution had been provided in the diocese several years prior to Misericordia Dei, commencing shortly after Bishop Morris was ordained as bishop.

The issue of general absolution led to a dispute between the prelate and Cardinal Francis Arinze, then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

Bishop Morris’s “position on this sacramental matter was seen as defiant and ongoing opposition to the position of the congregation”, according to a document from the Toowoomba College of Consultors.

In his 2006 Advent pastoral Letter, Bishop Morris stated that he would be prepared to ordain married priests and women priests if the Vatican allowed it.

He also said that due to an ageing clergy, the Church should be open to recognising the validity of Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting church orders.

This, and a failed attempt to get Bishop Morris to Rome to meet Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Arinze and Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led to Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput’s apostolic visitation in April 2007. This visit included an interview with Bishop Morris.

A memorandum dated June 28, 2007, from the Congregation for Bishops requested Bishop Morris’s resignation. He received the unsigned memorandum in September and replied September 17, saying he would “reflect” on the request and reply after his October holidays.

An October 3, 2007, letter from the Congregation for Bishops informed Bishop Morris the request for his resignation was being made “in the name of the Holy Father”.

After more exchanged letters, Bishop Morris travelled to Rome and on January 19, 2008, met with Cardinal Re, Cardinal Levada and Cardinal Arinze. He was accompanied by Archbishop Philip Wilson, then president of the Australian bishops’ conference.

Bishop Morris told Cardinal Re in a letter dated January 24, 2008, that “he felt unable to resign”, which was followed by another letter from the cardinal again calling on him to resign.

More letters and documents were exchanged, and in October Cardinal Re again demanded Bishop Morris resign by the end of November 2008. The letter also stated that if the resignation was not forthcoming the bishop would be removed.

Bishop Morris replied in December 2008 saying that “in conscience he could not resign”. He then wrote to the Pope and met him on June 4, 2009, at which time the pontiff “reiterated the demands of the three cardinals”.

Cardinal Re again asked for Bishop Morris’s resignation in a July 9, 2009, letter, prompting him to write to the pope clarifying his position that “in conscience he could not resign from office”.

Pope Benedict replied on December 22, 2009, requesting that Bishop Morris resign from office, reminding him there is no appeal from papal decisions.

In their May letter, the Australian bishops said they appreciated that “Bishop Morris’s human qualities were never in question; nor is there any doubt about the contribution he has made to the life of the Church in Toowoomba and beyond. The Pope’s decision was not a denial of the personal and pastoral gifts that Bishop Morris has brought to the episcopal ministry. Rather, it was judged that there were problems of doctrine and discipline, and we regret that these could not be resolved.

“We are hopeful that Bishop Morris will continue to serve the Church in other ways in the years ahead,” they added.

Bishop Fellay says that the aim of the talks was to make the faith “understood in Rome” – yet he accepts that the Vatican participants have not changed their minds about any of the disputed issues. Another SSPX bishop, the disgraced Bishop Richard Williamson, described it as a “dialogue of the deaf”, in which neither side went into the discussion with any notion of compromise or of budging on their positions.

On the other hand, Pope Benedict XVI is determined to heal the divisions within the Church. In his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, he wrote that every effort must be made to achieve unity. The SSPX and the Vatican talking to each other brings the prospect of that unity closer than if there were no dialogue at all. Bishop Fellay himself says the talks were of “capital importance” – even if he is only interested in persuading Rome that he and his SSPX followers are right.

So, were the negotiations a waste of time? Or were they an important step on the long road towards unity?

Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the letter aimed at ensuring the bishops fully followed Church law for dealing with accusations in order to avoid a situation in which an abusive priest could return to ministry on the technicality of his bishop mishandling the process.

The letter, brought to public attention this week by Ireland’s RTE television and published by the Associated Press, was written by Archbishop Luciano Storero, then-nuncio to Ireland. The letter summarised the concerns of the Congregation for Clergy regarding proposed Irish norms for dealing with the sex abuse crisis.

Archbishop Storero said that according to the congregation, “the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature”.

Fr Lombardi said: “One must note that the letter in no way says that the country’s laws must not be followed.”

He said that the Vatican “does not have a universal, specific position on mandatory reporting because the laws and situations are so different from country to country”.

However, he said, the Vatican has made it clear to bishops that in their policies for dealing with abuse accusations and in concrete situations “they must respect the laws of their country”, including when those laws require the Church to report accusations to police or the courts.

News reports and groups of sex abuse victims have pointed to the 1997 letter as evidence that the Vatican directly orchestrated the response of bishops’ conferences to the sex abuse crisis, and that even in the late 1990s not everyone at the Vatican was convinced that abusers should be turned over to the police.

Fr Lombardi objected to the letter being presented as some kind of “proof” that the Vatican wanted to cover up cases of abuse.

Instead, he said, the letter demonstrated the seriousness with which the Vatican was taking the need to formulate and adopt comprehensive norms that could respond to the crisis, which was already affecting several English-speaking countries.

“The letter rightly insists on the fact that it is important that canon law be respected always, precisely to avoid giving the guilty well-founded reasons for an appeal, therefore obtaining a result contrary to that desired,” Fr Lombardi said.

The Jesuit also said people have to realise that the letter was written before 2001 when Pope John Paul II issued new norms for dealing with abuse allegations and made the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – headed by the future Pope Benedict XVI – responsible for overseeing handling of the cases.

The season of Advent draws on the “inner toughness” of those who observe it, the Pope said in his Angelus address yesterday (full text, video).

The Wikileaks cables relating to the Vatican have prompted comment from David Quinn, Damian Thompson, Joanna Bogle, Archbishop Cranmer, Paul Moses, Austen Ivereigh, Edward Pentin and John Allen.

Zenit publishes the full text of Fr Raniero Cantalamessa’s Advent reflection for the Pope and the Roman Curia on “the Christian response to secularism”.

Michael Slackman argues that secularism is gaining ground in Poland.

Victor L Simpson and Nicole Winfield look into the new crisis facing the Vatican Bank.

Sandro Magister reports on the continuing reverberations followings the Pope’s remarks on condoms.

The American Chesterton Society has launched its new website.

And Joe Carter muses on reports that the Pope’s summer residence will be heated by horse flatulence.