Fr Brian D'Arcy - 'I would have been a far better priest had I married'

          

One of Ireland's best-known clerics Fr Brian D'Arcy has said he would have been a far better priest if he had married. 

Speaking on The Late Late Show on Friday night, the Passionist priest expressed regret that he had never had the chance to marry.

"Every choice you make in life rules out a series of other choices," he told host Ryan Tubridy.

"Nobody put a gun to my head and said you must be a priest. In fact, everybody said to me 'you shouldn't be a priest'. I choice to be a priest. But I would have been a far better priest had I married."

The cleric from Enniskillen was censured by the Vatican in 2012 for his views on issues such as the church’s handling of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, same-sex marriage, the ban on women priests, contraception and mandatory celibacy.

In the past he admitted that he had been in a relationship with a woman after he joined the priesthood in 1962 and although he decided to end his romance, it has had a lasting impact on him.

"Love is the greatest thing that happens in one's life and it changes one completely. Me particularly, it changed me completely," he told The Late Late Show audience.

"I have lovely friends in the ministry, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, terrific friends. I see them with their wives and families and I think 'why can't we just cop ourselves on and  do the same'?"