Irish bishops working to limit scope of apostolic visitation?
October 07, 2010
Irish Church leaders sought to limit the scope of a Vatican investigation when they met this week with officials of the Holy See, according to a report in the Irish Catholic.
Ireland’s leading Catholic newspaper reported that the four Irish archbishops who met with Vatican officials on October 6 were hoping that the apostolic visitation of the Irish Church would focus on the handling of sex-abuse charges and the training of future priests in Irish seminaries. The report said that “the bishops do not want a broader investigation of their overall management, something they resisted strongly in their meetings with the Pope last February when the prospect of a visitation was raised.”
However, the Irish Catholic notes that the schedule for this week’s meetings in Rome—designed to coordinate plans for the apostolic visitation—gave the Irish prelates only one day to make their arguments. That tight schedule, the paper suggested, could indicate that “the terms of reference may have been decided and that the Vatican has a clear idea of where it wants this process to go.”
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