Boy, WikiLeaks is really racking up the enemies, huh? If Julian Assange is ever found dead, there's going to be a very long list of suspects. No wonder the Vatican condemned the WikiLeaks release: (AP) — Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables
December 12, 2010

Boy, WikiLeaks is really racking up the enemies, huh? If Julian Assange is ever found dead, there's going to be a very long list of suspects. No wonder the Vatican condemned the WikiLeaks release:

(AP) — Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables indicate that the Vatican felt "offended" that Ireland failed to respect Holy See "sovereignty" by asking high-ranking churchmen to answer questions from an Irish commission probing decades of sex abuse of minors by clergy.

That the Holy See used its diplomatic-immunity status as a tiny city-state to try to thwart the Irish fact-finding probe has long been known. But the WikiLeaks cables, published by Britain's The Guardian newspaper on Saturday, contain delicate, behind-the-scenes diplomatic assessments of the highly charged situation.

The Vatican press office declined to comment on the content of the cables Saturday, but decried the leaks as a matter of "extreme seriousness."

The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See also condemned the leaks and said the Vatican and America cooperate in promoting universal values.

One leaked document published Saturday, authored in February 2010 by Rome-based diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes, cited her conversations with Irish Ambassador Noel Fahey and his deputy, Helena Keleher, about the diplomatic bind Ireland found itself in.

Ireland wanted to be seen as fully supportive of the independent probe into child-abuse cover-ups in the Dublin Archdiocese, but its Rome officials also didn't want to intervene in the probe's efforts to get information from the Vatican, Noyes' report said.

Noyes reported that Irish diplomats in Rome decided not to press Vatican officials to respond to questions from the panel, which was led by an Irish judge and operated independently of Ireland's government. It sent letters to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Vatican's ambassador to Ireland seeking information on Vatican officials' knowledge of cover-ups, but got no replies.

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