Aidan Wilson had always suspected that the local priest who baptised him as a baby in the UK was his father.
The ‘man in black’ in a photograph in his house growing up was Fr Paddy Crowe, originally from Tuam, Co Galway, who worked and lived in England for much of his life before his death in 2000.
But it was a full 22 years later before Mr Wilson, 57, was finally told by his brother Pat, who had three months to live at the time, that the priest who bore a close resemblance to him was indeed his father.
Over the past three years, Mr Wilson has been searching for answers about the man who fathered him, and what has become of the wealth he amassed during his lifetime.
Mr Wilson said the Catholic Church has many questions to answer, including if its members in England know what happened to the money his father allegedly amassed over his lifetime.
He suspects that an Irish-based nun could hold the all-important information on Fr Crowe’s fortune, but she has refused to speak to him about the matter. Attempts by Extra.ie to contact the nun were rebuffed by her order.
Mr Wilson said the nun was very close to Fr Crowe and would take holidays with him, and that she accompanied him to hospital for the surgery where he died on the operating table.
Mr Wilson has spoken with the Bishop of Northampton, the Bishop of East Anglia, three of Fr Crowe’s colleagues in Luton, as well as the head of the Columban fathers in the UK concerning the case.
The police force in Bedfordshire, England, is also liaising with Mr Wilson after he tried to submit a criminal complaint regarding his father’s missing money. He is now attempting to hire a UK-based solicitor to help him get answers.
A photograph published for the first time today shows Fr Crowe baptising Aidan at St John’s Church in Norwich, knowing the baby was his own child.
Through DNA websites such as My Heritage and Ancestry.com, Aidan was able to determine that his first cousins were the children of Fr Paddy’s siblings. A DNA test also proves his brother Pat is actually his half-brother.
He now wants Fr Crowe’s body to be exhumed to finally clear up any doubts about his parentage. Mr Wilson is also demanding that a ‘proper investigation’ is carried out into this father’s missing fortune.
But Mr Wilson insists it’s not about the money, but about finding out the truth.
‘I don’t want people to read this and think, “oh yeah, here we go, he’s only after his money.” I was lied to for over 50 years of my life. I want the lies to stop, and I just want the truth.’
Aidan’s story begins in the 1960s, when Fr Crowe was a curate in Norwich, a historic cathedral city in the southeast of England.
‘From a very, very young age, I always felt that my mum’s husband, Bob, wasn’t my dad,’ he recalls.
‘When I was very, very young, I questioned it. For a start, I never called him dad. I called him Bob. And I would say, “Why do I call you Bob?” He said: “Well, everyone calls me Bob.” And I said, “well, I don’t look like you” and he’d just say that I took after my mum.
‘When I was young, I had a baby book and there were all things to do with the baby; locks of hair, pictures, what-have-you. But there’s two pictures in that. One was a picture of a man in black holding a baby, which was me, and another picture was the man in black, my mum and me. And I would say to my mum, “who is that man?” She’d say that was the priest who baptised you, and I’d say, “he looks like me, mum”, and then she’d change the subject.’
Aidan said it was only when his mother was dying in 1999 that the subject of Fr Crowe and the family secret became more pronounced.
Aidan has since gone on to say that had he been told the truth, he would have had the opportunity to meet Fr Crowe before his death.
‘I always thought that that man in the picture was my dad, the man who baptised me. Anyway, this went on. I got nothing out of Mum and Bob, but when I was 12 years old, my big brother Pat, who is 17 years older than me, he and my mum had a massive falling out to the tune that they never spoke for 20 years until her deathbed.
‘Pat disappeared, basically, for 20 years, but when mum was dying, I told Pat he had better go and see mum in Ireland, because she’s dying, and he did so.
‘So me and Pat got together for the first time in 20 years, and we went for a drink. We’re still waiting for mum to be buried, and that’s the first time I said to Pat: “Is Bob my dad?” He was a bit taken aback about this because I said, “I don’t think he is. I never thought he was,” and he would lie and say, “yeah, yeah, he is.”‘ Aidan said this ‘went on for over two decades’, in the early 2000s, when the brothers temporarily lived together, Pat hinted he had something to tell him.
‘Sometimes, when he’d had a few, he nearly told me something. He almost told me a few things.
‘He said he [priest] had to get out of Norwich quickly. Something happened.’ Finally, after pressing the matter, Pat finally told his brother the truth while they were out having Christmas dinner in 2022. Pat was dying of cancer,’ Aidan said. ‘Pat only had a few months left to live, and I said to Pat at the table: “Right, Pat. Same question I’ve been asking you for decades – is Bob my dad?” And he said, “No, he’s not. Your dad is Patrick Crowe. He’s the bloke in the picture.”
‘I said, I knew it all these years! You lied to me.’ After that, Aidan said, ‘Pat told me everything.’
He told his brother Fr Crowe and their mother were always close, and that he was suspicious the pair were in a romantic relationship.
He also recounted how Fr Crowe burst into the hairdressers where Pat was apprenticing at the time and announced to everyone: ‘It’s a boy! It’s a boy! We have a boy!’ Fr Crowe used to watch Pat play football every Thursday, but he began to notice that, shortly after the whistle blew, the priest would leave and head towards the Wilson household.
Aidan said that one Thursday, Pat got himself subbed, went home early and ‘caught mum and [Fr] Paddy naked having sex in the living room’.
He told Extra.ie: ‘He [Pat] got himself into an altercation with Paddy. And mum was shouting at him, in the living room, to “leave that man alone”. Anyway, Paddy grabbed his clothes, scurried out the house, putting them on, and ran out, and disappeared. And then mum was pregnant.’
Aidan said his brother was scared for the future of his family as Fr Crowe continued to come around to the house. At one stage, Pat went to St John’s Church in Norwich and told a senior priest Fr Crowe was the father of his little brother. Months later, after hearing nothing back, Pat returned to the church to demand that something be done.
On this occasion, Aidan said his brother spoke with ‘a more senior priest. He said: “I want something done. Everyone knows what’s going on here. Something needs to happen.”‘ Days later, Fr Crowe arrived at their family home and revealed he was being sent away. He never returned to the Wilson home but took up several new parishes, eventually settling in Luton.
After Aidan finally discovered the truth about his father, he tried to get in touch with his relatives in Ireland. He said some were delighted to hear they had ‘a piece of Paddy still alive’, but others were less forthcoming. It was through Aidan’s conversations with his new-found cousins that he heard of Fr Crowe ‘fortune’.
He said multiple people told him his late father was ‘minted’ and that he had always been successful when it came to money. This came as a surprise to Aidan, as he had heard that the only thing that was handed over after his death was Fr Crowe’s car, which went to the priest’s brother, Anthony.
From this point, Aidan began carrying out his own investigations with the help of Vincent Doyle of Coping International – an organisation set up to help children of priests around the world.
Through the organisation, attempts are now being made to find out exactly what happened to Fr Crowe’s fortune.