Sex scandal bishop tells of fleeing the media
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sex scandal bishop tells of fleeing the media*
By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:15am BST 16/04/2007
The former Bishop of Galway has spoken for the first time about his
years on the run after he was at the centre of a sex scandal that
shocked the Roman Catholic Church.
Eamonn Casey broke his silence about the Catholic network that smuggled
him across two continents after the exposure of his affair with Annie
Murphy, an Irish-American divorcee with whom he had a child.
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In his first interview since returning to Ireland last year, Fr Casey
revealed that Pope John Paul II did not want him to resign as bishop
when told that he had fathered a child.
He also spoke of the great lengths he went to and the huge distances he
travelled to evade the media as he paid his penance in a North American
monastery and with a South American mission.
After years of eluding journalists, the 79-year-old clergyman chose to
tell his story to Maurice O'Keefe, an Irish folklorist who recorded
several hours of interviews with him at his house in Shangalish, Co Galway.
The interviews disclose the life Fr Casey led after fleeing Ireland as a
result of the 1992 disclosure that he had siphoned funds from the Galway
diocese to support his mistress and their son Peter, who was born in 1974.
The 70,000 Irish pounds has since been repaid to the diocese and Fr
Casey has apologised for his conduct.
In conversation with Mr O'Keefe, Fr Casey described how he travelled to
Rome to tender his resignation when he knew that his relationship was
about to be made public.
Prior to the publication of his lover's kiss and tell memoirs Forbidden
Fruit he was stuck in the Vatican for three days dealing with the Pope's
representative.
"All I wanted was to submit my resignation and acknowledge my
wrong-doing and leave it at that," said Fr Casey, who masterminded the
Pope's visit to Ireland in 1979.
"But he (the Pope's representative) wouldn't accept it. He said the Holy
Father doesn't want to accept it."
Fr Casey was coy about his relationship with Mrs Murphy and their son,
saying that he "ignored" her book when it came out. Their relationship
caused a sensation in Ireland and in the Catholic Church, which had yet
to be hit by many of its more unsavoury scandals involving child abuse
and predatory priests.
He was more forthcoming about the people who smuggled him from one safe
house to another as he attempted to preserve his anonymity on the other
side of the Atlantic.
Through his friends, he was sent to a North American monastery, where
his fellow clergy had taken a vow of silence and were forbidden from
smoking. Twice he set off the alarm by smoking in his room late at
night, but he was able to answer the 750 letters he had received.
"That was a delightful six months," he said. "I tried to seek out what
was God's will for me."
The answer was to escape to Ecuador, where he used an old Catholic
connection to arrange work with the American missionary Society of St
James the Apostle. For six and a half years he worked with parish
priests building schools and churches.
While there he was sent on a six-month Spanish language course 100 miles
outside Mexico City. But he was "betrayed" after three months when two
cars drew up outside the gate and two people got out. One started taking
photographs.
Fr Casey went to the headmaster and swiftly explained who he was and why
the press arrived. He was smuggled out in a convoy of cars. He travelled
hundreds of miles to link up with a leading Augustinian, who was also
from Galway, while a friend travelled 1,000 miles to pick up his
passport so he could go to Florida.
After moving to the south of England in 1998 to work as a hospital
chaplain, he is now home in Galway and looking forward to taking Mass in
public once more.
He cannot until a Church investigation into false accusations made
against him is completed. In 2005, a woman made unfounded allegations of
child abuse claiming the alleged incidents took place 30 years ago. The
Irish police investigation was completed last August and no charges are
to be brought. have your say
* 500 Irish priests 'having regular sex with women'*
By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent
At least 500 women in Ireland are conducting clandestine affairs with
Roman Catholic priests, according to the leader of a support group set
up to look after those in forbidden relationships.
An indication of the extent of illicit sexual relationships within the
church was given after it was disclosed that Fr Maurice "Mossy" Dillane,
73, had fathered a child with his 31-year-old girlfriend.
Bishop Pat Buckley said an extremely conservative estimate was that one
in 10 of the 5,000 Catholic priests in Ireland enjoyed regular sex with
women and some even referred to their clerical collar as the "bird catcher".
Studies had shown that 80 per cent of priests had broken their vows of
celibacy on at least one occasion, he said.
Bishop Buckley runs the Bethany organisation in Larne, Co Antrim, which
he set up to provide support to those in love affairs with the clergy.
Described as Ireland's rebel bishop, Bishop Buckley was sidelined by the
Catholic church in the mid-1980s when he pursued his own ministry for
those who felt alienated by the traditional church.
When the statistics were widened to take in practising homosexuals,
Bishop Buckley said up to 40 per cent of the Catholic clergy in Ireland
were sexually active.
Counselling sessions organised by Bethany have disclosed that several
women were unwittingly having sex with the same priest.
He claimed the church's hierarchy was prepared to turn a blind eye to
sexual indiscretion because it was so widespread. "Bishops are caught
between Rome and the priests and, of course, some of the bishops are in
the same position (i.e. having relationships)," he said.
"From the top down it is hypocritical. We are preaching compulsory
celibacy, but very few are living it."
He said he had met 147 women who had joined Bethany in order to share
their stories of adultery and priestly promiscuity.
Romances between an understanding man of God and an unloved wife were
commonplace, as were priests and their housekeepers secretly living
together as man and wife while relationships between priests and nuns
were unofficially known as the "third way" by the church.
Bishop Buckley said Fr Dillane and the mother of his child had nothing
to be ashamed of and urged them to come out of the safe houses where
they have been hiding since news of their relationship swept through
Ireland.
The case of Fr Dillane, a sociable and charismatic priest from Co
Galway, has been greeted with a tolerance that was absent 14-years ago
when Bishop Eamon Casey, the Bishop of Galway, was disclosed as the
father of a teenage son by an American divorcee, Annie Murphy. He was
forced to apologise when it emerged that he had siphoned £70,000 from
the diocese for their upkeep.
Bishop Buckley has been a long-standing campaigner against compulsory
celibacy and points to a recent Irish survey suggesting that 90 per cent
of the population thought clergy should be allowed to marry. He also
believes that enforced celibacy is an unnatural state that could be to
blame for the sexual deviancy that led to the child abuse scandal that
erupted in Ireland last year.
"Some priests are in the Jack the lad mould and have several
relationships in various parishes. I have heard priests refer to their
clerical collar as the bird catcher," Bishop Buckley said.
The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland declined to comment on Bishop
Buckley's claims.