When Ireland's prime minister, Enda Kenny, dared to attack the Vatican's role in the alleged cover-up of child abuse, he unleashed an unprecedented row between the Catholic church and the Irish state, with Rome recalling its ambassador to Dublin, and one priest even comparing Kenny to Adolf Hitler.
But Kenny's speech has also won him thousands of letters of support, and revealed how – after centuries in which the Catholic church was a dominant force in Irish society – the influence of Rome has dwindled, leaving a country that is now more tolerant and secular than at any time in its history.
"It was a monumental moment. Here was a man who is a practising Catholic and yet he was prepared to say these things," said Ciara McGrattan, the deputy editor of Gay Community News.
Even the country's leading Catholic newspaper praised Kenny's speech, in which he accused the church's hierarchy of downplaying the rape and torture of children to uphold the power of the church.
In an editorial, the Irish Catholic said Kenny had "captured the anger of a generation" and described the church hierarchy as "arrogant and authoritarian".
Not everyone agreed: one Irish priest wrote that the last European leader to issue such a blistering attack on a pope "was the ruthless German dictator Adolf Hitler".
Father Thomas Daly was forced to apologise for the comment, made in a pamphlet entitled "Heil Herr Kenny".
Vatican officials feel that the church has been unfairly attacked, possibly for political reasons.
One high-ranking official who spoke on condition of anonymity noted Ireland was caught up in the euro crisis and speculated that Kenny might have been seeking to distract public opinion.
Others stressed that the Holy See's response, which has been promised by the end of August, would seek to heal the breach.
But the signs this week were that it would also include a vigorous defence of the Vatican's
position.
In Dublin gay and secular activists said Kenny's comments reflected a new Ireland, where attitudes to the church and its influence on daily life have quietly undergone a dramatic shift over the past decade.
Until 1993 homosexuality was still illegal but, according to McGrattan, conditions for gay people have dramatically improved over the past 10 years.
"There has been a move across the board even in schools – of which more than 90% are controlled by the Catholic church – where talk about being gay is no longer banned or simply ignored. Gay youth groups are even going into schools to talk about homophobic bullying. This is real progress."
That tolerance is measured in a series of current opinion polls that show the openly gay Irish senator David Norris as the people's favourite to become Ireland's next president when the country elects a new head of state in the autumn.
Striding through central Dublin with a rainbow-striped gay rights banner across his shoulder, Richy Guidon Smith said he admired Kenny's stance – especially as the Irish premier's Fine Gael party was once among the staunchest defenders of the Catholic Church's temporal power.
"What he said about the Vatican was unusual language for any prime minister – but especially an Irish prime minister and one who is a Catholic himself. It may have been surprising but he was representing the country when he said it," he said.
"We stand very much behind him on that as we have a lot of anger towards the Vatican over the sort of horrible things they have said about gay people."
Mick Nugent, satirist and secular campaigner, said atheists were among the fastest growing minorities in Ireland.
In 1981, just 39,000 people ticked the "no religion" box on the national census; in the last survey, carried out in 2006, that figure had risen to 180,000, and Nugent estimated the figure could now be as high as a quarter of a million.
"In the early 1980s you needed to be married and have a doctor's prescription to buy a condom," he said.
"In the early 1990s divorce was still illegal. Today we finally have a taoiseach standing up to the Vatican but [you still] have to swear a religious oath to become president or a judge. The Catholic church still controls around 90% of primary schools. And we still have a blasphemy law passed by the last government."
"The difference between 20 years ago and today is that most people now recognise that these things have to change."
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