As President Michael D Higgins made his way up the steps of Galway
Cathedral for the funeral Mass of his friend, the once-beloved Bishop
Eamonn Casey, he could hardly have conceived that the deceased would
stand accused of a litany of child abuse allegations.
Indeed,
in the days immediately after his death, debate raged about how to pay
final respects to a man who had brought such trouble upon the Church.
Some members of the Galway Diocese knew when he was laid to rest in
the crypt of Galway Cathedral that there were at least five allegations
of child sexual abuse against him in every diocese in which he had
served.
One member of the clergy, who described Casey as a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’
character, said allegations against him were an ‘open secret’ in the
Church, including alleged consensual relations with adult women – before
and after his spectacular fall from grace in 1992.
Annie Murphy exposed him, after he fathered a son, Peter, with her,
forcing him to step down as Bishop of Galway and flee to Ecuador after
handing his resignation to the Pope.
And by now, other women were also waiting to expose him for far greater alleged crimes when their own time came.
Monday night was Patricia Donovan’s time.
She has waited more than 50 years to tell her story and truly be
heard by the public and the Church, giving her version of events for the
first time on camera, in a documentary produced by RTÉ in association
with The Irish Mail on Sunday.
She has claimed that she was raped and sexually abused by Casey from the age of five for more than a decade.
Now, there are calls, as well a petition, for his remains to be
disinterred from the crypt and removed to a more appropriate location,
in keeping with a member of the clergy removed from ministry due to
credible allegations of child sexual abuse.
That is the Church’s own terminology – ‘credible’ – and clergy are
only removed from ministry if it is deemed so. And yet the Church sought
to bury those allegations with Casey, and persisted in trying to keep
them buried years after his death.
In 2019, the Galway Diocese told the Mail on Sunday it had just one
allegation on file against Bishop Casey. It had, in fact, five child sex
abuse allegations on file at that time, it later admitted.
It sought to
blame a change-over with a new bishop taking up office for it not being
fully across the full tranche of files on him at that time
This week, RTÉ’s Liveline programme hosted by Joe Duffy has for four
days straight been fielding calls from elderly women who have since
thrown their picture of Bishop Casey into the fire, as well as a woman
who says a priest would not preside over a funeral Mass for her
stillborn baby.
Waves of hurt have been unleashed against the Church by those who had once turned to it for solace and comfort.
By the time Casey died, the Church’s book on him had long been closed.
He had been banned from public ministry in 2007 for the last ten
years of his life – a decision that was never made known to the public.
But the potential for causing even greater damage to the Church still
lingered after his death and the over-riding motivation was for the
institution to protect itself.
And yet the Vatican did not want any role in the funeral – nor did it send any representatives such as the Papal Nuncio – and said it left decisions to the ‘local level.’
On that day of his funeral, privately, Bishop Casey’s victims looked on with their own horror.
Outwardly, it seemed that the disgraced bishop’s ceremony was a funeral Mass in keeping with a prince of the Church.
Some 1,600 people turned up to pay their respects to the deceased, and among them were 11 bishops and 61 priests.
No cardinals or archbishops were present, and the Bishop of Limerick,
Dr Brendan Leahy, who is aware of the details of three child abuse
allegations filed against Bishop Casey in his diocese, said he had
another prior commitment that day.
Others looked on, appalled at a different kind of hypocrisy.
‘I found that extraordinarily hypocritical. Here were his greatest
critics suddenly celebrating him when he was gone,’ said Tom Kenny of
Kenny’s bookshop in Galway, a friend of Bishop Casey’s.
But sources have confirmed that there was division over how best to honour Casey’s life.
How would they honour a man they knew was subject to numerous sexual
allegations and quietly removed from ministry, especially when the
public had not been told? How would they honour a man who fathered a
child with his distant American cousin, which many parishioners had long
since forgiven him for?
And how, in recognising all of this, would they merge two sets of
protocols for a funeral – that of a bishop’s funeral and also one for a
cleric permanently removed from ministry?
The Catholic Church sets out guidelines for the funerals of members
of the clergy removed from ministry – many of which were not observed in
Galway.
One of those protocols is to be mindful of the victim in every way possible.
Casey’s niece Patricia Donovan said to the more thank 490,000 viewers
of the programme who watched on Monday night: ‘The week I found out
that he had died, I was planning to end my life. The horror of finding out on that Saturday that he had been put into
the crypt in Galway Cathedral, when they knew that I had reported him,
and someone before me had reported him for abuse… And maybe, in a weird
way, it saved my life, because well, I vowed at that point, I’d try
and get heard.’
But there are other victims who have not been heard at all.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children within the Catholic
Church in Ireland also issues protocols to dioceses regarding funerals
in such circumstances.
They are asked to consider whether the location of the funeral Mass
would have a negative impact on the complainants; to carefully choose
the readings; to ensure that the homily does not negatively affect the
complainants; and to balance the needs of the complainants with the
deceased’s family members.
During the funeral Mass in 2017, Brendan Kelly, then Bishop of Galway, made repeated references to sin.
These were not lost on members of the clergy and to some faithful parishioners, but likely would have been lost on the masses.
An acknowledgment of the hurt endured by survivors of clerical sexual
abuse is set out in the protocols for funerals of those removed from
ministry.
‘Yes, we are all sinners, but irresponsibility, infidelity and sin
are very shocking in the lives of those who preach the gospel,’ said
Bishop Kelly.
‘But people had been hurt and wounded wounds that do not always heal easily or quickly. We remember these people today too.
We acknowledge their suffering. We pray for continued healing and peace for them.’
However, sources said that a number of the usual protocols for a bishop’s funeral were noticeably absent from the 2017 ceremony.
There was no pall, or religious cloth, placed over the coffin.
There was no mitre, crozier, pectoral cross or ring on Bishop Casey’s coffin.
No religious emblems of his life were brought to the altar by his
family. Instead, the family crests and an emblem of Tròcaire, where he
was once chairman, were brought to the altar.
His remains were not laid out on a catafalque. He did not receive an overnight vigil and guard of honour in the Cathedral.
Bishop Kelly stated to RTÉ that ‘Bishop Casey’s funeral liturgy
followed the precedent set by previous such funerals for former bishops
of the diocese’. This statement was made to the programme before Galway
Diocese later admitted that it had more complaints on file relating to
Bishop Casey than previously disclosed.
Thos responsible might have tried to square away the moral and
ethical reasons for the funeral he received in their own mind, but
publicly they cannot offer any justification.
One source said: ‘The funeral of Eamonn Casey was deliberately toned
down. The normal thing in the Cathedral was a catafalque – that has
dignity and pomp; it’s what you would lay out a king on.
‘They wanted to put a pall on the coffin, which would have given it dignity. That wasn’t done.
‘It was a simple coffin on two oak trestles.
‘His mitre wasn’t on it, his crozier wasn’t on it.
‘They would always have been at a bishop’s funeral.
‘There was no pectoral cross, no ring. None of those four symbols of
his authority were present. He lay before the altar as a parishioner of
the diocese.
‘If the Church said, “We’re not burying him in the cathedral because
of A, B and C”, it would have raised so many questions, and the feeling
was, “The man is dead, he has to be buried and we only had a matter of
days”.
‘He did spend overnight [in the cathedral], but there is protocol for
a bishop’s funeral of an allnight guard of honour, an all-night vigil.
None of that was done. The high dignity wasn’t there. He got the honour
of a sinner.
‘There was no viable Plan B. There was nothing bishop-y about his
funeral, other than the people who attended. He got a sermon that would
never, ever be given at a lay person’s funeral.’
Canon law expert Tom Doyle said of the protocols for a bishop’s
funeral that were not followed: ‘That would probably be lost on most of
the lay people.’
However, he added that ‘if you have a bishop like Casey, he is being
buried in the cathedral in Galway, and you got a bunch of other bishops
and priests that are present, that’s what they’re going to be looking
at’.
He continued: ‘That is the statement right there, not whether they
put a mitre or crozier or whatever else on the altar or next to his
coffin. People aren’t aware of any of that.’
He further stated: ‘I have seen a number of times that priests who
have been known as prolific sexual abusers were buried with the regular
honours as a priest would get, and it causes a tremendous uproar,
especially the hurt that is imposed on the victims who cannot understand
why the official Church cont
Former president and canon lawyer Mary McAleese said that in her view ‘something more humble would have been called for’.
She added: ‘It is about showing a sensitivity which says, “We’re not
going to give this man the full panoply that normally accompanies a
bishop or a cardinal”.’
Irish Times religious affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry said: ‘It
was incredible, it was like an act of reconciliation, a happy ending if
you like to a turbulent life, that had brought such trouble on the
Church in Ireland. A farewell in forgiveness for what had happened in
the past.’
But as Monday night’s programme revealed, this was not a ‘happy
ending’ in the sorry saga of a priest who was once meant to be the
Church’s new great hope, who ultimately led to the crumbling of the
institution’s stronghold in this country.
As one source in the Church told me: ‘Eamonn Casey’s light shined extraordinarily bright, but his dark was also extreme.
‘There is very little about Eamonn Casey that’s in the middle, that’s
ordinary. With most of us there’s light and dark and they are not that
far apart.’
Casey was interred, according to his own wishes and those of his family, in the bishop’s crypt in the Cathedral.
Seven years after he was laid to rest, the ghosts of Bishop Casey’s
past are continuing to haunt him, the Church, his victims and the
faithful.
His ‘light’ was always apparent, but his darkness will now define him.
