The Pope’s ambassador to Ireland has been ordered to get answers from the Vatican on damning revelations that it allowed priests to ignore the law.

Papal Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza was told to take a message to the Holy See that the Irish Government believes its conduct in clerical child abuse inquiries has been disgraceful and unacceptable.

The Catholic hierarchy in Rome stand accused of effectively briefing clergy in a 1997 letter to allow them to defy guidelines and not report paedophiles in their ranks.

Pressure is also intensifying on disgraced former bishop John Magee – found to have misled authorities over abuse allegations in the Diocese of Cloyne in Co Cork as recently as 2008 – to come out of hiding.

He resigned in 2010 but two bishops have led calls for him to publicly answer for his failures.

Amid the increasingly damaging fall-out from a report in the Cloyne Diocese, Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned that canon law and church policy would never again defend priests for failing to report abuse allegations.

“The law of the land should not be stopped by crozier, or by collar,” Mr Kenny said.

Eamon Gilmore, Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister, said he has warned the Archbishop about a new law of five years’ jail for anyone who does not alert authorities about crimes against a child.

“I told him that the Government considered it unacceptable that the Vatican intervention may have led priests to believe that they could in conscience evade their responsibilities under Irish laws,” the Tanaiste said.

“I told him that I believed that a response is required and I look forward to receiving it.”

The Archbishop, who was summoned to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin for a second time in two years in the wake of a damning report on clerical abuse, was given a copy of the Cloyne report to pass on to the Vatican.

He refused to answer questions after the meeting but said he was distressed by the findings, which go to the heart of the Church.