MARIAN visionary Christina Gallagher has lost the entire board of her House of Prayer after all three directors resigned suddenly on the same day, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The three directors, whose resignation was
revealed in company documents released just this week, have been put
under gagging orders to prevent them from explaining their decision to
quit the controversial retreat on Achill Island.
It is the second
resignation of an entire board of directors at the company. Older
company records show four directors threw in the towel on 8 November
2008.
All three of the directors who took over from that board, retired optician Eithne Lavery, housewife Bridie Conneally and school principal Annette Casey, said they could not comment on the reason for their own resignations just over two weeks ago.
They cited a confidentiality agreement they had signed with the House
of Prayer. All three directors said the MoS should ask the House of
Prayer to release their resignation letters to discover why they stepped
down.
But on Friday Sr Treasa Doyle, manager of the retreat, refused to hand over the correspondence,
saying it was confidential.
Claimed she suffered stigmata on her feet
The three directors of Miss Gallagher’s
Achill Island retreat, run by the Our Lady Queen of Peace House of Prayer (Achill) Ltd company, quit on June 11.
But publicly
available company records were updated at the Companies registration
Office this week. Miss Gallagher first claimed to have seen visions of
the Virgin Mary in her kitchen two decades ago and later claimed to
suffer from stigmata on her feet.
She set up the House of Prayer in the
early 1990s, amassing a vast fortune and several multimillion euro homes
even though she has no visible personal income.
Among the luxury
properties she and her family have acquired is a €4m mansion in Malahide’s exclusive
Abington estate where her neighbours include Westlife’s Nicky Byrne and
his wife Georgina, daughter of Bertie Ahern.
‘It’s a miracle that Christina is still alive’
Two years ago, an undercover reporter from the MoS attended services in the House of Prayer where they heard Miss Gallagher and
her spiritual adviser Fr Gerard McGinnity, seeking donations from her
followers and warning that the antichrist was coming.
Last night the
former directors of the House of Prayer refused to say why they
resigned. Miss Lavery said: ‘We did resign together, that is correct,
but due to a confidentiality clause I’m afraid I cannot disclose our
reasons or our concerns for resigning.
‘However, you have my permission
if you wish to ask any of the members of the House of Prayer for a copy
of my letter of resignation, so that would be the route that you would
go.’
Similarly Mrs Conneally said: ‘We are bound by confidentiality,
which we have been reminded of, that we signed when we became directors, just over two years ago. ‘You have our full permission to
go to [House of Prayer] and request a copy of our letter of
resignation.’
Asked if Christina Gallagher would like to say anything about the resignations, Sr Doyle said:
‘Christina is in ill-health at the moment and I doubt that she would.’
She added: ‘Is it surprising after what the media have put her through for the past five years? The
miracle is that she is alive.’
Archbishop of Tuam Michael Neary has
warned visitors to the House of Prayer to be ‘very careful and
circumspect in going there’.
Both the gardaí and Revenue Commissioners
have investigated the Centre.
Aside from the Revenue stripping Miss Gallagher’s retreat of its charitable status in 2006, no action
has been taken against it.
The latest accounts show that the centre had a
‘retained profit carried forward’ of €1,726,560.