What other ‘caca’ is the Church hiding from us?

BEFORE Pope Francis flew home – his Irish visit overshadowed by the neverending crisis in the Catholic Church over clerical sexual abuse – he condemned those who covered up such abuse as ‘caca’ during a private meeting with survivors. While there was some debate about whether the words ‘excrement’ or ‘s***’ were more accurate translations of the scatological caca, there was little dispute about the target of the Pope’s invective – the dominant culture of secrecy within the Irish Church – that contributed to abusers remaining undetected for so long – and the catastrophic mismanagement of the crisis by the hierarchy.

This provided a steady stream of child victims to predatory priests like Fr Brendan Smith or Fr Seán Fortune as they were shunted between parishes rather than being stripped of their ministry as soon as their sordid proclivities were uncovered.

But among the gallery of corrupt priests and their enablers recalled by Pope Francis’s colourful language, most of us would never have placed Bishop Eamonn Casey.

The once powerful prelate was brought down in 1992 when Annie Murphy revealed her affair with the then Bishop of Kerry, and the existence of their secret son Peter.

But while the bishop’s affair scandalised the country, forcing him into exile, over time, and as the country was traumatised by horrific allegations of child sex abuse rocking the Church to its very foundations, Bishop Casey came to be seen in a more benevolent light.

When he died in 2017, a frail echo of the triumphant figure he cut during his heyday, the verdict, even in circles most sharply critical of ecclesiastical might, was that – compared to monsters who raped and brutalised children – Casey, with his passion for social justice and once-off romance with a beautiful woman, was not such a bad guy after all.

INDEED for some reforming forces in the Church he came to embody the impossibility of clerical celibacy and a persuasive case for allowing priests marry. But last week’s exclusive report in this newspaper certainly nails that myth. Far from being a normal red-blooded male it shows Bishop Casey as a far more menacing character who was so lacking in boundaries that he allegedly raped and sexually abused his own niece Patricia Donovan from the age of five.

Journalist Anne Sheridan meticulously charts the allegations made against Bishop Casey by three women.

In 2005, as his niece placed her allegations in front of the UK police, a second woman saw her

High Court action against Bishop Casey struck out after the Residential Institutions Redress Board got involved.

In 2016 a third woman started proceedings in the High Court, which were struck out on Casey’s death. The Diocese of Limerick confirmed that a settlement was later paid to this woman.

The allegations were an open secret in some circles. The dioceses of Limerick and Galway admit they knew of them and of the restrictions that were placed on his ministry as a result – which Casey flouted, donning his clerical garb to officiate at family funerals and other Church events. He even agreed to perform a Baptism until the local bishop stepped in.

Members of the Redress Board, the gardaí in Limerick who investigated the allegations, the Church authorities, the courts, the HSE, child safety officials – these institutions were in the know about the cloud of suspicion that hung over Bishop Casey.

NOTHING was ever proven in a court of law, so they kept their counsel and, while they did so, children, in the time-honoured fashion of Irish society’s inept handling of child sex abuse, were needlessly put at risk. In last week’s report, a source said that were it not for the allegations swirling around Bishop Casey, he’d have had a more active ministry: ‘There was a view that after

the Annie Murphy scandal, that maybe the Church had been too hard on Bishop Casey and some contended that perhaps he should have been allowed to return to some form of a limited ministry. And he may have been, were it not for these other allegations.’

Bishop Casey didn’t have free rein and for that perhaps we should be thankful.

But the fact remains that while the Church was busily assuring the flock of its having turned a corner regarding how it deals with clerical sex abuse and institutional violence, it was still up to its old tricks with Bishop Casey.

To borrow a phrase from Pope Francis, one must wonder what other ‘caca’, the Church has kept from us.