DUBLIN — The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the cover-up by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by the Irish government.

Alan Shatter, the Irish justice minister, called the findings “truly scandalous,” adding that the church’s earlier promises to report all abuse cases since 1995 to civil authorities were “built on sand.” Abuse victims called the report more evidence that the church sought to protect priests rather than children.

In Germany on Wednesday, the country’s Roman Catholic bishops took new steps to bring previously unreported abuse to light. The German bishops said they would allow outside investigators to look for abuse cases in diocesan personnel records dating back at least 10 years, and in some cases all the way to 1945, though there were indications that some crucial records may have already been destroyed.

In both Germany and Ireland, the abuse scandal has touched the highest echelons of the church. The new developments showed the tensions between civil and ecclesiastical justice in a crisis that has shaken the church’s moral authority worldwide. The Irish report in particular revealed a complex tug of war between the Irish church and the Vatican over how to handle abuse, with a fine line between confusion and obstruction.