Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Open Letter to the Irish Prime Minister

This evening Declan received confirmation from the Irish Embassy in London that his application for a passport "will be processed in approximately 3 weeks". Nothing unusual in that, except that in Declan's case it has taken a complaint to the British Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), two letters to the Irish Ambassador to Britain and this Open Letter to the Irish Prime Minister (the letter Declan refers to from the Papal Nuncio concerning the Irish Sisters of Mercy is archived here):

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This afternoon Declan had to send this email to Ambassador McDonagh's PA via the Embassy's website:
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Never before has an Irish Prime Minister attacked the Vatican so virulently as Taoiseach Enda Kenny did last July, when he said: "The Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day." 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, says the Catholic Herald, Kenny was in fact playing to the gallery: his speech merely reflected the ferocious public anger at the Catholic Church.