The Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations has accused the UN of distorting facts in its damning report which denounced the Church for failing to stamp out child abuse.
The report failed to take into account the fact that the Vatican had made "a series of changes for the protection of children", and its efforts at reform were "facts, evidence, which cannot be distorted", Silvano Tomasi said in an interview with Vatican Radio on Wednesday.
He said the report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child - which was drawn up after a landmark hearing last month between human rights experts and senior Churchmen - "almost appears to have been prepared before the meeting".
While the Vatican had given "detailed, precise answers to several points" raised by the experts, they "were not included in the final report, or at least appear not to have been taken into serious consideration", he said.
The report "appears to be out of date, bearing in mind what actions the Holy See has taken in these past few years. It is simply a question of facts, evidence, which cannot be distorted", Tomasi added.
The UN report said "tens of thousands of children worldwide" had been abused systemically for years within the Catholic Church, which it called on to remove all clergy suspected of raping or molesting children.
It cited a long record of cover-ups that protected abusers and questioned the real impact of the zero tolerance approach announced by former pontiff Benedict XVI and his successor Francis.
