Papal surrender

Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead could be seen storming out of Sunday mass halfway through the service. Why? Their parish priest had come on too strong. He had not only ordered them how to vote but also supplied grisly details of an abortion procedure.

Presumably some of them voted to repeal the eighth amendment. The ‘Yes’ campaign couldn’t have won its two-thirds majority without the support of practising Catholics. Very few of these, we can assume, were militantly pro-choice. Instead, they were reassured by promises that any future law would be limited in its impact — and determined to ignore a Catholic hierarchy contaminated by child abuse.

The only Catholic bishop who could have changed their minds was Pope Francis, whose 70 per cent approval rating in Ireland puts him ahead of any other world leader. But he said nothing, before or after the referendum. This isn’t surprising. Although Francis loves to make headlines, any deliberately controversial things he says — as opposed to accidental faux pas — tend to challenge social conservatism, and especially the socially conservative teachings of his own church.

Last month, for example, he reportedly told Juan Carlos Cruz, a gay Chilean abuse victim: ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The Pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.’

It’s no good saying, as some conservative Catholics have, that we have only Mr Cruz’s word for this. The Vatican did nothing to correct or finesse these comments. This is the Pope’s modus operandi: he leaves the reporting of his views to third parties and then sits back and enjoys the storm.