PROFILE: Propelled to Bishop of Cloyne by a glittering career in the Vatican, John Magee faces very serious accusations.
PRIVATE
SECRETARY to three popes and and party to an infamous “white lie”
concerning the death of Pope John Paul I, Bishop John Magee (74) faces
the greatest challenge of his life following revelations in yesterday’s
Cloyne report.
Apart from its finding his behaviour was
“inappropriate” where one young man was concerned, he may now also face
charges of reckless endangerment through overseeing “inadequate and in
some respects dangerous” child safeguarding practices in Cloyne diocese
while bishop there.
The man now at the centre of this latest
Catholic Church child sex abuse storm has had a colourful life. From
Newry, Co Down, he is unique in Catholic Church history, being the only
private secretary to serve three popes. Between 1975 and 1982, he was
private secretary to popes Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II.
Born
on September 24th, 1936, he was one of seven children. His father,
Charles, owned a 360-acre dairy farm near Newry and had been president
of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, chairman of the Northern Ireland Hospitals
Board, and president of Newry Agricultural Society.
After
attending St Colman’s College in Newry, in 1954 John Magee entered the
St Patrick’s Missionary Society religious congregation, based at
Kiltegan, Co Wicklow. During his first year there, both his parents
died.
In 1955, he began attending UCC, from where he graduated
with an honours philosophy degree in 1958 before going to study theology
in Rome. He was ordained there on St Patrick’s Day, 1962.
He
worked on the missions in Nigeria for almost six years before being
appointed Procurator General of the St Patrick’s Society in Rome in
1968. Then began his climb through Vatican structures.
In 1969 he was
appointed secretary to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelisation
of Peoples, a position he held until he was appointed personal and
private secretary to Pope Paul VI in 1975.
Years later, he would
speak of the father-son relationship he enjoyed with Pope Paul VI and
the more brotherly bonds he experienced with Pope John Paul I and Pope
John Paul II.
During Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979, Msgr
Magee was a constant presence at his side.
In 1981, Msgr Magee
visited Bobby Sands during the hunger strikes at the pope’s request, in
an unsuccessful attempt to bring the strikes to an end. Just days before
Bobby Sands died, he personally implored republican leaders in the Maze
Prison to call off their protest. The plea failed, but its significance
was not lost, and on his deathbed Sands wore a crucifix he had given
him.
The Maze talks, which drew massive publicity, saw Magee meet
other hunger strikers, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara
(all of whom died later), before he embarked on a sequence of private
attempts to sympathise with families of victims of republican violence.
While
in Northern Ireland, he went to the funeral of Richard McKee, a
Protestant UDR soldier shot dead by the IRA and prayed at his coffin. He
also met the family of Catholic Territorial Army officer Hugh McGinn,
shot dead outside his home near Armagh by the INLA.
In 1982, he
was appointed Pope John Paul II’s master of ceremonies, a position he
held until his surprise appointment as Bishop of Cloyne in 1987. His
loyalty to the church was so strong it made him party to one of the more
infamous white lies of the 20th century.
This followed Pope John
Paul I’s death in 1978. Amid the consternation prompted by the death of
the new pope, after just 33 days in office, the Vatican offered
bewildering and contradictory accounts of who found the pope, as well as
the time and cause of his death.
It issued the statement: “This
morning, September 29th, 1978, about 5.30am, the private secretary of
the pope, contrary to custom, not having found the Holy Father in the
chapel of his private apartment, looked in his room and found him dead
in bed with the light on . . .”
In an interview with
The Irish Times in March 1987, when he was ordained in Rome as
Bishop of Cloyne and on being asked if there was truth in the theory
that a nun was the first person to find Pope John Paul I’s body, Bishop
Magee said, “No”. He continued: “I found him and I will stand before any
person and challenge him.”
But a year later, in the September
1988 issue of religious affairs magazine Trenta Giorni (30 days), he had
changed his mind, saying: “In the morning, around 5.30am, a sister woke
me in a state of agitation – the pope is dead, she said. She had been
worried about the fact that the pope had not yet drunk the coffee that
she usually left for him at 4.30am in front of his door. Then she ran
below and told me.”
Most commentators now accept the dead pope was
found in his bedroom in the early morning by Sr Vincenza, a nun in the
papal household.
Senior Vatican figures felt it would be inappropriate
to issue a press statement saying a nun had been in the pope’s bedroom
early in the morning.
Nevertheless Bishop Magee claimed
consistency in his accounts. In a 1990 interview with RTÉ, he said: “I
did find the body of his holiness. I just didn’t find it first.”
In the 1989 book
A Thief In The Night , written with Vatican approval to
discredit murder theories about John Paul I’s death, John Cornwell
concluded all was “not well” in the papal household then, citing the
“rivalry and enmity” between Magee and the pope’s Italian secretary, Don
Diego Lorenzi.
In an interview, Lorenzi did little to hide this
tension, suggesting Magee had toed the Vatican line with his eye on a
bishop’s hat: “. . . We have never been told what to say after the pope
died . . . so I’ve always been open about it and talked to anybody.
Magee has said nothing about Papa Luciani . He has been scared, probably
because his bishopric was just around the corner. When he was elected
bishop, he had nothing to fear for his own career. Do you get it? So,
now he has no problem in saying the truth . . .”
His posting to
Cloyne from Rome in 1987 was a surprise. Commentators believed his
closeness to three pontiffs had paved the way for a bishopric in Rome,
which, as far as is publicly known, was never offered.
Then, in Ireland,
it was speculated he was being posted to Cloyne as a stepping stone to
becoming archbishop of Armagh and Catholic Primate of All-Ireland.
While
in Cloyne, Bishop Magee courted little controversy or publicity, bar
one lengthy row over a proposed renovation of St Colman’s Cathedral in
Cobh.
Then, in 2008, a report was published on the Cloyne website
revealing how Bishop Magee had been less than vigilant when it came to
child protection.
The 2008 report was prepared by the Irish
church’s own child protection watchdog, its National Board for
Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, which found child
protection practices in Cloyne were “inadequate and in some respects
dangerous”.
This was despite Bishop Magee having signed up to the
implementation of the Irish church’s 1996 guidelines and its updated
version in 2005.
He had been a member of the Irish Episcopal Conference
since 1987, which introduced both.
In January 2009, when
announcing the remit of the Murphy commission was being extended to
include Cloyne diocese, then minister for children Barry Andrews
disclosed that Bishop Magee had misled the State on child protection in
Cloyne.
He did so when, following publication of the Ferns report in
October 2005, he assured the late Brian Lenihan, then minister for
children, that child protection practices in Cloyne were in line with
church and State guidelines.
He did so again in 2007 where a
Health Service Executive audit of such practices was concerned.
In both
instances, he “misled” the State authorities, yesterday’s report found,
by providing “false” information.
The report also found he misled
the national board’s chief executive Ian Elliott who conducted that 2008
church watchdog report, and did not provide him with all documentation
in his possession.
The report further found that Bishop Magee
prepared two separate and different accounts of a meeting with an
accused priest in September 2005.
One was for Rome, where the priest
admitted his guilt, and one for a Cloyne advisory committee, which
included lay people, where the allegation was denied.
This latter
account also recorded that Bishop Magee told the priest he was standing
him down from ministry pending an investigation.
Early in 2009,
despite a tsunami of calls for his resignation following the board’s
report, Bishop Magee remained determined not to stand down.
He was
supported by three of Ireland’s Catholic archbishops: the Catholic
primate, Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel and
Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of
Dublin said he should do what was right by child protection in his
diocese, widely interpreted at the time as indicating Bishop Magee
should step down
In January 2009, “Joseph” made allegations
against Bishop Magee himself. These were not made public until
yesterday.
In expressing support for Bishop Magee at the time, both
Cardinal Brady and Archbishop Clifford were aware of this allegation.
It is unclear whether Archbishop Martin or Archbishop Neary were so aware then.
In
March 2009, Bishop Magee announced he was standing aside from
administrative duties in Cloyne to assist the commission in its
investigations.
Rome announced that Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel
had been appointed Apostolic Administrator to Cloyne diocese.
A
year later, in March 2010, Bishop Magee announced his resignation.
Currently, he is in retirement at Mitchelstown and remains a bishop in
good standing with the Catholic Church.
Whereas his greatest
irresponsibility was wanton and reckless disregard for the protection of
children in Cloyne, it is most likely that, following yesterday’s
report, most focus will be on allegations of inappropriate behaviour
with a young man made against Bishop Magee himself.