A major RTÉ documentary in association with the MoS, which airs tonight, investigates how the Catholic Church handled at least five child sexual abuse allegations against the former Bishop of Galway.
It comes after it was previously revealed how four women complained of alleged child sexual abuse against Bishop Casey, including his niece.
Now it has emerged the Vatican reaffirmed the ban on the disgraced Irish cleric’s ministry after his niece, Patricia Donovan, made a complaint of child sex abuse against him in 2005.
In a rare statement, the Vatican confirmed it banned Bishop Casey from ministry before 2006, and reiterated that ban to him the following year.
The RTÉ documentary will broadcast further revelations about the controversial former Bishop of Kerry and Galway, who was forced to resign following his dramatic fall from grace in 1992 after he fathered a child with his distant American cousin, Annie Murphy.
The Vatican ordered him to leave the country and he became a missionary in South America before eventually returning to Ireland in 2006. Bishop Casey remained out of ministry for the last 12 years of his life, from at least 2005 to the day he died on March 13, 2017, aged 89.
The Vatican statement also reveals the ban was never lifted – despite appeals by Casey and his supporters that he should be allowed to return to ministry.
The statement said: ‘We can confirm that Bishop Casey had been requested not to publicly exercise the ministry before 2006, in terms that were reiterated formally in 2007, and he was never reinstated in the following years in spite of insistence from him and on his behalf. When further allegations were produced in 2015, Bishop Casey was already suffering from various physical and mental problems. These were of the type that would have rendered his defence difficult.’
Aside from any criminal investigation or civil case for personal injury damages, the Vatican also conducts its own separate investigations into alleged clerical sexual abuse. Under Vatican rules, clergy members must remain out of ministry until cleared by both State and Church.
However, strict restrictions set down for Bishop Casey’s return to Galway in 2006 were never lifted. At the time, he was suspended from clerical duties as the Vatican examined statements from his niece and other alleged victims. Under the restrictions, Bishop Casey was not allowed to say Mass in public; he could only attend Mass as a member of the congregation or say Mass privately in his own home.
He was also ordered not to give media interviews while the Vatican investigated the complaints against him.
However, Bishop Casey went on to repeatedly breach the Vatican restrictions. He officiated at Mass in several dioceses several times; he continued to wear clerical clothing and represented himself as a priest in good standing.
The complaints sent from Irish dioceses to the Papal Nuncio for Rome’s attention covered the period of three serving Popes, from at least 2001 until after 2016, spanning the papacies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and the current Pope Francis.
Canon law expert Fr Aidan McGrath said of the Vatican’s internal handling of the case: ‘A bishop himself, his only superior is the pope.’
‘So, who do you report a bishop to? That was never very clear, but certainly… any disciplinary action then would have been taken by the Congregation for Bishops. Now, they are not authorised to set up a tribunal and do an investigation… so they will weigh it up and then… acting on behalf of the pope, would have the authority to impose restrictions.’
By 2005, the Vatican had received at least three complaints of alleged child sexual abuse on file against Bishop Casey. Two of these are related to his time as the Bishop of Kerry. Another dated back to his time in the Limerick Diocese in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The first known complaint against Bishop Casey was received in 2001 by the Limerick Diocese. This later resulted in a settlement, which was confidential at the time. Separately, the Kerry Diocese described the one complaint it directly received against Bishop Casey in 2005 as a historical child safeguarding concern.
But this was recorded as a child sex allegation on the Galway Diocese’s files. In 2005, Patricia Donovan also made her complaint, believing she was the first person to report her uncle.
She also claims that she was abused while he was Bishop of Kerry and that some of the alleged abuse happened in the Kerry Diocese.
Her initial complaint was not filed directly with the Kerry diocese. The complaint the Kerry Diocese received is distinct from Patricia’s.
The two other complaints in 2001 and 2005 had not been publicly reported at that time. But others would follow.
In 2019, the MoS revealed two complaints of alleged child sexual abuse against him in the Limerick Diocese later resulted in settlements. One of these was the complaint made in 2001.
This resulted in a settlement made through the Residential Institutions Redress Board after the plaintiff dropped her High Court action against Bishop Casey.
As a condition under the terms of the Redress Board, the woman was legally prohibited from speaking about the case.
However, the MoS revealed details of her story in 2019, and in tomorrow night’s documentary – called Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets – further details will be heard about the specific nature of her alleged complaints of sexual abuse for the first time.
It was also previously revealed how another case taken by a Limerick woman later went to the High Court after she also alleged she was sexually abused as a child. She was awarded a settlement of more than €100,000.
Her complaint was reported to the diocese in 2014 and relates to alleged abuse in the 1960s within the Diocese of Limerick. Ms Donovan, who lives in the UK, also made a criminal complaint to British police in November 2005, alleging she was abused from the age of five for more than a decade.