Michael O’Connor, the former president of a seminary in the diocese of Waterford and Lismore, also continues to live rent-free in a Church-owned property despite being dismissed from the priesthood.
The former priest claims that he is not guilty of abusing five girls, some of whom made allegations of abuse against him from incidents between the 1970s and the 1990s. This week, O’Connor – a former captain of Waterford Golf Club – confirmed that he has written to the Pope’s ambassador in Ireland and the Vatican in a bid to be reinstated to the priesthood.
Speaking out for the first time this week, some of his alleged victims have come forward following a three-month MoS/WLR [Waterford Local Radio] investigation, with shocking claims about how they were abused by O’Connor as children.
These include allegations that:
■ The former priest fondled and molested an eight-year-old girl at her home while her parents were in the next room
■ Molested another 11-year-old girl he took to a golf tournament in his car
■ When confronted by the father of other alleged victims, he told him: ‘Sure, I’ve a girlfriend now – and I kiss her and everything.’
Michael O’Connor has also spoken for the first time about the abuse allegations that culminated in his removal for the priesthood.
The now-84-year-old admits drying off the naked bodies of some children he took swimming in 1972 but still denies he ever committed any abuse.
O’Connor also admitted he was interviewed by gardaí in two separate investigations in the past.
The former priest was sent to the Saint Luke Institute in Maryland in the US by the former Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, William Lee, where he was classified as ‘being a danger to female minors without successful treatment’.
However, O’Connor admits he never went for treatment. He said a separate assessment by a psychologist from UCD found he was ‘a man of adult, heterosexual interests… and there was no evidence of sexual attraction towards children’.
The former priest also admitted he still carries around a photograph of himself posing with some of the alleged victims that was taken back in 1975, on his phone.
Asked why he still carries the photograph, he would only say ‘it became relevant’.
The defrocked priest claims the internal Church inquiry into the allegations was superseded by a Garda investigation into the claims, which the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) ultimately decided not to pursue. He told the MoS: ‘It seems important to me and to many of my colleagues that the protection of the civil law should be available to priests.
‘In the view of most people, no private agency, like a bishop or a diocese, can override the conclusions of the prosecution service of the Irish State.’
O’Connor also claims that the internal inquiry he said was spearheaded by the current Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus
Cullinan, ‘ clearly violated the Church regulation, which stipulates that the investigation should be carried out with respect for the civil laws of each state’.
However, Bishop Cullinan has insisted the inquiry was initiated ‘in accordance with Church procedures’.
In a previous statement, the Bishop noted that he had referred the case to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican – the Vatican’s chief doctrinal and disciplinary authority, which was formerly known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
‘The result of this inquiry is that Michael O’Connor has been dismissed from the clerical state, and therefore is no longer a priest,’ Bishop Cullinan said in January 2024.
‘This decision is solely based on the outcome of this Church inquiry.’