Recently released diplomatic cables show the Vatican fighting to shore up its eroding control over sexual abuse scandals in the United States and Ireland, highlighting complex tensions between the Vatican hierarchy, local bishops and civil authorities.

Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.

The cables were obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times and other news organizations. They do not appear to contain any bombshells about the Vatican, but they provide a telling glimpse of how American diplomats often rely on the Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide network of prelates for intelligence.

Some cables read in part like thrillers, like when Opus Dei, the powerful religious order, took pains to distance itself from one of its members: Robert P. Hanssen, an FBI agent who in a dramatic case in 2001 pleaded guilty to being a longtime Russian spy.

Others reveal some of the complex diplomacy between the United States and the Vatican during the abuse scandal that hit the United States in 2002.

A cable sent that year by the United States Embassy to the Holy See said that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Pope John Paul II’s last secretary of state, “took the bulk of his initial meeting” with Ambassador James Nicholson “to register his displeasure with the several lawsuits filed in U.S. courts that have been served at the Vatican.”

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11vatican.html?_r=1&ref=world