Vatican hits back at WikiLeaks over Irish abuse claims

The Vatican has hit back after WikiLeaks showed it had refused to cooperate during the Murphy Commission into child sex abuse by Irish priests.

The Vatican press office expressed scepticism at the reliability of the reports and spoke of "the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences".

"Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials," it said.

"Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind."

The leaked cable from the US embassy in Rome said that requests for information by Ireland's Murphy Commission "offended many in the Vatican... because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty".

The Murphy commission's findings, published in November 2009, detailed how authorities had covered up for paedophile priests in Dublin for three decades, causing widespead outrage.