The Irish Prime Minister has attacked the Vatican over its failure to tackle clerical child sex abuse.
Enda Kenny accused the Catholic Church of "dysfunction, disconnection and elitism" after failing to handle child abuse allegations against 19 clerics in southern Ireland.
Kenny was speaking after a report last week criticised the church in its handling of the crisis where it attempted to cover up the sex abuse of children.
Catholic Kenny said he did not find it easy to be so critical of the church but said the Cloyne report findings were of a “different order”.
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"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," he told the Dail, the lower house of parliament.
"And in doing so, the Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism, that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.
"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'," he added.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi declined to comment on Kenny's remarks.
The Cloyne report was one of a series of that have rocked predominately Catholic Ireland, detailing horrific sex abuse of children and attempts by church leaders to cover them up.
The two-year probe into the handling of complaints made in the largely rural diocese of Cloyne between 1996 and 2009 found the authorities' response to have been "inadequate and inappropriate", and said this had compounded the victims' pain.
Kenny said that far from listening to the evidence with compassion and humility, the Vatican's reaction was "calculated" and "withering".
He blasted the influence of the church, saying that "clericalism has rendered some of Ireland's brightest, most privileged and powerful men, either unwilling or unable to address the horrors cited" in landmark recent abuse reports.
