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.
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce