Britain and the Vatican have discussed their approach to protests over clerical child abuse during the Pope's visit to Britain.
Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Scotland tomorrow for a four-day visit.
Britain's ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Campbell, has told RTÉ News the issue has arisen in talks between the British Foreign Office and Vatican officials.
Mr Campbell is from Northern Ireland and is the first Catholic to represent Britain at the Vatican since the Reformation.
He has been at the centre of negotiations in the run up to the papal visit.
He said the impact of clerical sex abuse scandals in Britain has been less acute than in Ireland.
Mr Campbell has also told RTÉ News of his embarrassment at having to apologise for a British Foreign Office memo earlier this year which had joked that the Pope should launch a brand of condoms and open an abortion clinic while in Britain.
He said it caused annoyance when it was published in the press and could have destroyed years of planning for the visit.
All-Ireland Primate Cardinal Seán Brady has said the Pope's message during his visit to Britain will also have significance for Ireland.
Cardinal Brady was speaking before he left for Scotland.
'I am very much looking forward to this Papal visit to Britain. I am delighted to be able to accept invitations, from various church and state bodies, to attend engagements and liturgical events at which his holiness will be present.
'The relevance of his messages this week will no doubt have a significant and long-term resonance with society both in our neighbouring island as well as with us here in Ireland.'
Senior advisor pulls out of visit
Meanwhile, a senior Papal advisor has pulled out of the Pope's visit to Britain due to illness only days after comparing England to a 'Third World country'.
Cardinal Walter Kaspar made the remarks to German news magazine Focus in an interview published at the weekend.
'England today is a secularised and pluralist country. When you land at Heathrow airport, you sometimes think you've landed in a Third World country,' he was quoted as saying.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the cardinal's comments should not be seen as negative and they referred to the broad mixture of people of many different origins living in a metropolis such as London.
'A cosmopolitan reality, a melting pot of contemporary humanity, with its diversity and its problems,' he said in an emailed statement.
He said Cardinal Kaspar was not going on the trip because he had been quite sick for most of the summer and his doctors had advised him not to travel.
