Fr Sean McManus, a brother of nationalist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Frank McManus, is a member of the Redemptorist Order who came to the attention of the IRA leadership after he swore an affidavit that the RUC had badly beaten a protester an anti-internment rally in Enniskillen in 1971.
He was serving in Perth in Scotland at the time. He was later sent to America by the Order, becoming head of the Irish National Caucus there. Mac Stiofain held a meeting with Fr McManus in Navan.
In a recent interview with Mark Hennessy of the Irish Times, he recalled being home on holiday in Co Louth when he got a request from Sean MacStiofain for another meeting. Mac Stiofain sent a car to collect him from his hotel in Louth.
“He said one sentence to me, just one: 'One of our men wants to see a priest, would you go and see him?'. And I said, yes, I'll do that,” McManus told Hennessy.
“I assumed that this man, whoever he was, was important, couldn't go out to church or be seen in case he was picked up, or whatever. And that's why he wanted someone to come to him.”
A day later, the priest was picked up by two men, one of whom he believes was killed more than two decades later by the Ulster Volunteer Force when he worked behind a newsagent's counter.
The man he was being brought to meet, though he did not know at the time, was Joe Lynskey, a former Cistercian monk, who some 40 years later, the IRA would admit to killing.
Fr McManus was not blindfolded, but was told to close his eyes during the 30-minute journey to a house where he found two men in the kitchen. He believes they were aged in their 60s, and they were relaxed, with no sign of any tensions.
“One said, 'Hello Father'. The other said, 'Joe's up there on the right',” Fr McManus says. The mood was normal and pleasant, with no feeling that Lynskey (pictured right), was a prisoner, the priest added. He heard his confession in a small bedroom, as a normal, confidential confession.
There was no indication that it was a last confession, or last rites for someone on the brink of death. Though Fr McManus did not know it, he had given Lynskey his final confession because a court martial headed by Mac Stiofain had condemned him, according to writer Martin Dillon in his latest book, 'The Sorrow and The Loss'.
The decision to kill Lynskey followed an internal IRA investigation into an attempt on the life of another member, which at first was thought to be the work of the official IRA.
This led to an attack by the provisionals in Belfast during which a member or supporter of the officials was killed, and the near eruption of an all-out feud. However, an internal investigation by the provisionals led to Lynskey becoming the target of suspicion for the first of the attacks.
Former IRA member Dolours Price claimed before she died that she drove Lynskey across the Border to face interrogation.
Over the past decade, a number of digs have been carried out in bogs in Oristown and Wilkinstown, between Kells and Navan, in the search for Joe Lynskey's body, by the Independent Commission for the Recovery of Victims' Remains.
A search carried out by the commission at Coghalstown in 2015 uncovered the bodies of two more of 'The Disappeared', Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee. Fr McManus has met with commission investigator, Jon Hill, and last August met with Joe Lynskey's niece, Maria.