Ireland's top Catholic cleric Cardinal Sean Brady has been discharged from hospital after falling ill during a church ceremony, the Catholic Church said Wednesday.Seventy-year-old Brady -- who has faced calls to resign amid a child sex abuse scandal -- was admitted to hospital Tuesday after becoming ill at a church in his diocese in Northern Ireland.
But he was discharged from Craigavon Area Hospital "following a thorough medical assessment" and is returning home to Armagh in the British province where he will rest, said the Catholic Church in Ireland in a statement.
"I wish to thank the staff for their kindness and care during my time at the hospital," said Brady.
The Church did not say why the churchman had fallen ill. After he was taken to hospital, it said only he was in a "comfortable condition."
His spokesman said Brady became unwell during the second half of the service but he did not lose consciousness.
The leader of Ireland's Catholics has been under huge pressure to quit after it emerged that as a 35-year-old priest in 1975 he met two children abused by a notorious paedophile clergyman, Father Brendan Smyth.
The children were required by Brady to sign an oath of silence about their abuse and agree to talk to no one about their interviews except authorised clergy.
The police were not informed and Smyth went on to abuse children in Ireland, Scotland and the United States before he was finally convicted 20 years later and jailed for a catalogue of sexual offences.
His activities resulted in the fall of the Irish government in 1994.
Brady, who is the Primate of All Ireland, said last month he was ashamed of his failings and apologised to those who suffered.
Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country, has been rocked by two reports in the past year on child sex abuse stretching back decades, and on Church leaders' complicity in covering it up.
Pope Benedict XVI has issued a pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics, expressing remorse and sorrow for abuse inflicted on children by Irish priests and religious brothers.
The Vatican has been fighting to limit damage from the paedophile priests scandal, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland, Austria, the United States and the pope's native Germany in recent months.
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SIC: AFP