VATICAN INVESTIGATING ANOTHER FOUNDER FOR SEXUAL ABUSE

In April, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life asked a Peruvian bishop to investigate sexual-abuse allegations against Luis Fernando Figari.

Figari

Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo (born July 8, 1947 in Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian Catholic layman and the founder and former superior general of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. He has also founded Christian Life Movement and other religious associations. In October 2015 a book was published in Lima 'Mitad Monjes, Mitad Soldados' by Pedro Salinas, in which various testimonies denounced Figari for the physical, psychological and sexual abuse of young men, some of whom were minors.

The accusations against Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari came from one of the movement’s former members, Pedro Salinas, who recently published a book called “Half Monks, Half Soldiers” (Mitad Monjes, Mitad Soldados).

In it, Salinas quoted witnesses who described Figari as a “sexual abuser, a sexual predator.”

The group now apparently has acknowledged that at least some of the charges against Figari have merit.

He first studied Humanities and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and afterwards Law in the National University of San Marcos, in Lima. During this time, he became a leader of the National Confederation of Youths, the juvenile branch of National Odriist Union party, the political movement of former president Manuel A. Odria When he was 19 years old he was elected to represent all the university students from Lima, giving the welcoming speech to US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy during his visit to Peru.

After participating in politics and searching answers in philosophy, he began to walk through the path of the faith. A Passionist Priest, Father Constancio Bollar, who had baptized L.F. Figari and was a friend of the family, had an important role in his discernment towards a consecrated life. Fr. Bollar became, until his death in 1975, his spiritual director.

Figari with John Paul II

He would begin studying Theology in the Pontifical and Civil School of Theology of Lima, where he also taught in 1975.

His conversion process finds a culminating point in the foundation of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, in 1971. He calls that moment "baptism of a search". Cardinal Landazuri, the Archbishop of Lima, would start meeting with Figari in 1972, following closely the development of the Sodalitium and expressing his support.

Figari with Mother Teresa

In 1974, he founded the Immaculate Mary Association for women.

In 1984 Figari participated in the first World Youth's Day at Rome, pronouncing the “Catechesis on Love”, in Saint Paul Outside the Walls Basilica. One year later, in 1985, he founded the Christian Life Movement (CLM), an ecclesial movement.

In 1991, he founded the Marian Community of Reconciliation, a religious association for lay consecrated women.

In 1994, Christian Life Movement was recognized by the Vatican as an International Lay Association of Faithful of pontifical right.

In 1995, he founded the Confraternity of Our Lady of Reconciliation.

In 1997, Sodalitium was approved by Pope John Paul II as a Society of Apostolic Life for laymen and priests.

One year later, in 1998, Figari founded another religious association for consecrated women, the Servants of the Plan of God.

All the members of these institutions, who share a common spirit and goals, are said to form a spiritual family: the Sodalit Family. It is constituted by men and women of every age, and is extended throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in Australia and some countries of Asia and Africa.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II named Figari as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI named Figari as an Auditor to the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, one of the few lay participants invited to the assembly.

On June 3, 2006, Figari addressed the conclusive words to Pope Benedict XVI in the Encounter of the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities with the Pope at the Vigil of Pentecost in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican.

Figari receiving communion from Benedict

On December 21, 2010, Figari resigned to his role as Superior General of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, claiming health reasons.

Bishop Fortunato Pablo Urcey, prelate of Chota, was appointed apostolic visitor of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae – THE SODALITY OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

LIMA, Peru — The superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (Sodality of Christian Life) has made public that the community has had an apostolic visitor, who is charged with investigating accusations that its founder committed sexual abuse.

Bishop Urcey

The apostolic visitor, who was appointed April 22, is Bishop Fortunato Pablo Urcey of Chota. He was charged by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life with investigating allegations of abuse committed by Luis Fernando Figari.

“When we were told this measure was being taken, the Holy See asked us to not make the visit public or to share who had been appointed as (apostolic) visitor, so he could carry out his work in a serene environment without any pressure from the media,” Alessandro Moroni Llabrés, superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, stated Oct. 26.

“In the midst of the difficult situation we are going through, I requested authorization to make public that this investigation includes an apostolic visitation to our communities in Peru,” Moroni stated.

He explained that the visit began in August “and should conclude in March 2016.”

Bishop Pablo, who made solemn profession in the Order of Augustinian Recollects in 1968, was tasked with “determining the actual authenticity” of “accusations of improper behavior leveled at the founder of this society of apostolic life.”

According to the decree of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Bishop Pablo will have to write and send “a detailed account of his investigation and findings” to the dicastery.

The apostolic visitation is in response to accusations that the Holy See has received against Figari.

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life that was founded in 1971 in Peru and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. Alejandro Bermúdez, executive director of CNA, is a member of the community.

Figari stepped down as superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in 2010.

In addition to Peru, the community operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the United States and Italy.

HOW THE CHURCH MADE IRELAND A SOCIETY RIFE WITH HYPOCRISY AND SEXUAL GUILT

In an exclusive extract from his new book, best-selling historian Tim Pat Coogan writes a strongly personal perspective on the century following the 1916 Rising, charting a flawed history marked by the powerful influence of the Catholic church

• Sunday Independent (Ireland)
• 25 Oct 2015

Ireland — a society rife with hypocrisy and sexual guilt

IN 1966, I published Ireland Since The Rising, a history of Ireland in the 50 years between 1916 and 1966. The book was suffused with optimism. It was influenced by the promise of what I termed the ‘ watershed years’: the emergence of a new generation of Irish decision-takers with preoccupations and horizons wider than those influenced by the civil war and clerical domination. They had their eye on the wider world, and had been stimulated by the effects of the Second Vatican Council, the coming of television to Ireland and by far greater State expenditure on and control of what had been largely the church’s fiefdom — education.

Fast-forward 20 years, to 1986. I wrote another book, the stark lack of optimism of which could be summarised by its title, Disillusioned

Decades. In the present work, I chronicle what can validly be termed the age of scandal and betrayal. What went wrong? Many complex factors can be advanced to explain the problems that befell Ireland during this period. But an accurate and a valid answer may be encapsulated readily enough: a great deal of Ireland’s problems may be measured by the extent to which society’s leaders departed from the ideals of 1916 and the integrity of those who framed the Proclamation.

And this departure can, as we will see, be detected and measured in many aspects of subsequent Irish history: in the ways in which Irish children were used and abused, instead of being cherished equally, as the words of the Proclamation have it; in the attitude of society towards women’s rights and freedoms; in our general attitude to the social health and well-being that is necessary in the life of a nation, though all too frequently lacking in Ireland. In other words, what should have been part of the horizon-widening experience of the watershed years, including preparation for and subsequent entry into the EEC, in fact proved to be a factor in a sharp turn away from idealism.

*** The three monotheistic global religions — Christianity, Islam, Judaism — all use sex as an adjunct to religious power. In the jurisdictions in which they wield power and influence, this concern with matters sexual often manifests itself in an outward appearance of piety, accompanied by inward hypocrisy and cruel and unnatural forms of sexual subjugation. In an Irish context, this can be seen in myriad ways. Take, for example, the fetid Irish Catholic impulse to control female sexuality, which has certainly accounted for some of the nation’s bitterest controversies since 1916, and in more general terms for much of the sexual guilt that has permeated Irish society.

Guilt and sex were, for example, conjoined in the infamous custom of ‘churching’, which was once widespread amongst Irish women who had had children. Before receiving Holy Communion, women who had recently given birth had to be purified of the stain of sexuality associated with childbirth. Churching was ubiquitous until the 1960s in Ireland; after this point, the influence of Vatican II caused it to fall largely, though not wholly, out of use. Church teaching on contraception and abortion, meanwhile, was — and to a degree, one could argue, still is — responsible for a set of outcomes which were as cruel as they were hypocritical. Catholic teaching forbade the use of artificial forms of contraception, and the general scarcity and unavailability of contraceptives in Ireland until the 1970s was directly responsible for a diverse range of social scandals.

The most obvious of such scandals is the officially unacknowledged, but nevertheless continuing, passage to Britain of pregnant Irish women in order to terminate unwanted pregnancies. In cases where termination did not occur, meanwhile, poorer women were often faced with being forced into one of the dense network of so-called ‘ Magdalene laundries’: institutions where ‘fallen’ or otherwise socially rejected women worked, sometimes for years, under the aegis of Ireland’s religious orders, the twin objectives being to remove them from the view of society and to use them as a means of turning an economic profit for the orders.

Frequently, too, they were simply driven out of the district or country altogether; and in both scenarios, they were forced by socio-religious pressure to give up their babies for adoption. To this day, the Irish landscape contains mass graves: the final resting place of the mothers and babies ‘ cared for’ in such institutions. Many such mass graves are only now being excavated; others remain unexcavated, and their stories untold.

Nor were these evils untypical aberrations attributable to the ‘ few bad apples’ syndrome. On the contrary: these were the direct outcome of policies consciously followed by Church and State, which led parents to deliver their children into the hands of the institutions, rather than helping them to keep and rear their babies.

*** I would like to bring a personal reflection to bear now, on these subjects of Ireland, sex and the Catholic Church. One aspect of Church teaching which has always struck me as particularly outrageous is the high level of hypocrisy it inculcates in Irish life. As a young man on one of my first visits to the Aran Islands in 1959, I became friendly with an Inis Mor family, the mother of which had become pregnant by a man who was not her husband. Long, lonely months — while the husband was away from the island in a mental home, and with a lodger in the house — had produced a near-inevitable result. This was the island of 1959, where gossip, claustrophobia and a culture of surveillance were ubiquitous — and the woman’s pregnancy led to a withdrawal of friendships, such that the woman gave up going to Mass. This was rare behaviour indeed for an Irish Catholic mother in those days.

On the morning of the child’s birth, as the woman lay recovering in bed, the parish priest visited the house to stand over her and inform her that she was in mortal sin. What the priest did not realise, however, was that this culture of surveillance was absolute in its effects. An islander called at the presbytery to speak with the parish priest — and the result of the visit is best described in the island vernacular: … he got no answer, but bedad, all he got was the priest’s arse going up and down. When he looked in the window, the priest was on the job with the nurse.

The incident occurred many years ago. All the participants in this sad drama are dead. Readers cannot be expected to know, without explanation, that the real point of that story is not the priest’s hypocrisy, not the contrast between the way he judged the woman’s sexual needs and the manner in which he satisfied his own.

No: the real significance lies in the fact that, such was the awe with which the Church was regarded at this time, very little was ever said about the in flagrante moment. In over half a century of visiting the island, I never heard it discussed in a pub. It was a subject for mention around the fireside in low tones after the children were in bed.

The priest in due course got a rousing send-off when he left for another parish. He left Kilronan pier to the accompaniment of a fusillade of rockets from the encircling lifeboat, of which, like everything else on the island, he had been in charge. I happened to be on the boat, standing beside an American lady who remarked to the priest: “You must be very proud, Father. They all love you so much; you must have done great work!” In a sense, the island was a microcosm of what Ireland was like in 1959. It demonstrated the attitude of society as a whole to the clergy — God’s anointed, as they would have been thought of — at this time, and in subsequent decades.

*** They set forth the evils of immorality, which was always sexual immorality — contraception, divorce and so on — and, all the while, as a shocked public would later discover, many of these same thunderers were buggering little boys, keeping mistresses and, where money was concerned, keeping anything they could lay their hands on, as they set themselves up as moral arbiters.

In the modern era, the fall from grace of one particular bishop has come to epitomise the general decline of the Irish Church. In 1976, Eamon Casey (pictured below) was bishop of Kerry when word came through that he had been chosen to succeed Michael Browne in the diocese of Galway. Casey’s replacement of Browne seemed to indicate a profound psychological, stylistic and theological change in the Irish Church. Like Haughey, who became Taoiseach three years later, Casey was hailed as a moderniser. Both men were seen as the harbingers of a new era — as indeed they were, if not quite in the manner that people might have anticipated.

I attended Casey’s consecration as a bishop in Kerry in 1969. During the ceremony, a Maynooth professor remarked to me: “[Casey]’s not a theologian, he’s a tycoon.” This was a not an unfair description. Dressed in business attire, Casey would have appeared the epitome of a smooth CEO with a zest for life. Yet he also had a feeling for the poor. While he was serving for a period as a young curate in England, he set up a housing trust that enabled indigent Irish emigrants to buy their own homes.

His interests extended further still overseas: he helped support Trocaire, the Irish Catholic aid charity; and, after witnessing the assassination in 1980 of Archbishop Oscar Romero in the cathedral at San Salvador, he reacted angrily, lobbying the UN and the White House and, when President Reagan came to Ireland in 1984, joining in protests against the visit because of American foreign policy.

His larger-than-life personality appealed to the Irish. He wrote off BMWs with gay abandon and was the subject of a not unkindly joke: ‘ What’s the difference between God and Eamon Casey?’ Answer: ‘ God is everywhere, including Galway. Casey is everywhere except Galway.’ Casey’s father was a creamery manager and he was one of 10 children. As the brightest and the best tended to do in those days, Casey entered Maynooth at the age of 17 and was ordained in 1951 — appropriately enough, the year the Irish Hierarchy assisted in the collapse of an Irish government.

In 1992, the news broke that Casey had had a long relationship with an American divorcee, Annie Murphy, and that the couple had a son together, born in 1974.

Casey resigned his ministry and left the country: first for Britain and then Ecuador. Although all these facts are now well known, I only discovered when the Annie Murphy story broke that Casey had been the subject of a notable example of omerta within my own circle of friends: the details were known to many, but not broadcast or reported for some years. The

Irish Independent published an interview with Annie Murphy (on January 22, 2012) in which she explained how she and Casey came to be involved in the first place. She said that when Casey picked her up at the airport when she first came to Ireland in 1973, “a light went on, there was a spark, that was it… he was electric”. Annie had been sent to Ireland by her father, following a miscarriage and various other problems, and Casey was a distant cousin. He wasn’t distant for long.

Annie shared digs at that time with a woman I’ve known since she was a teenager. When Annie returned from weekends with Casey, she told my friend about romping with her new lover, sometimes dressed as Eamon liked her — in a bikini.

Annie scoffed at my friend’s reception of her stories: ‘You Irish girls are so prudish!’ And yet, for all that the story was by no means a secret, it took its time to emerge into the public realm: beginning with a report in the Irish Times that an Irish bishop had had an affair and fathered a son — though still not naming the bishop concerned. My friend now told her husband: ‘I’ll bet that’s Annie Murphy!’ It was. My discreet friend had maintained silence for almost 20 years, lest she caused scandal.

Murphy published a book, Forbidden Fruit (1994), which detailed the course of her relationship with Casey; she appeared on RTÉ’s The Late, Late Show, which still functioned at this time as a sort of national confessional.

Though his outing as a father was, initially, a shock to the Irish system — a shock of seismic proportions — his earlier popularity reasserted itself: at least to the extent that vox pops and first-hand experience would seem to indicate that people would have been glad to see him back in Ireland working as a priest. Casey remained in his missionary banishment in Ecuador, before moving to a parish in England.

In 2006, he was allowed to return to the west of Ireland, but was forbidden to say Mass.

My own sense is that Casey was too young when he became a priest — and too human. Many years after his fall from grace, he confessed in an interview that he found celibacy difficult not merely for sexual reasons, but because he missed the companionship. This was one glaring dilemma ignored by Church orthodoxy — one, of many.

FATHER EUGENE O'HAGAN - A BRIEF PORTRAIT

FATHER EUGENE O'HAGAN - A BRIEF PORTRAIT

Eugene O'Hagan is a priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor, a canon lawyer and the diocesan chancellor ad interim.

The reason that Eugene in the chancellor as interim is that the previous chancellor - Father John McManus is in Limbo - in spite of the fact that the Catholic Church no longer teaches Limbo as a doctrine. John McManus has been under investigation and Down and Connor has not yet fully decided his fate. Most people think that the McManus goose is cooked!

John McManus - Among the D&C "Disappeared"

Eugene is from Claudy in Derry and he attended Garron Tower, Queen's University Belfast and the Irish College in Rome. He spent 7 years in Rome and specialised in canon law. 

Eugene was from a musically talented family and was born with talent

A young Eugene

Those who knew Eugene as a child describe him as being extremely likable, industrious and bright.

A slightly older Eugene

It would be a mistake to think that Eugene only became in performing with the establishment of THE PRIESTS. Eugene sang with several choirs and he and the other two members of THE PRIESTS did a lot of singing when they were together in seminary. Their early nickname as a trio was HOLY, HOLY, HOLY.

WHAT IS EUGENE LIKE AS A PERSON?

I have met Eugene on a small number of occasions and I have also corresponded with him - mainly in his role as a conduit to the Bishop of Down and Connor.

I would say that Eugene is quiet and reserved and in official matters he is a listener rather than a talker. 

He always looks frail and pale and I certainly have the impression that he works far too hard and does not get an awful lot of time to relax. I imagine he can "let his hair down" but would be extremely careful in whose company he would do that.

Eugene (middle) with Big D and Little H

One of his many jobs is to be the PP of Ballyclare Parish which is not far from where I live. He is popular there with his parishioners .

Above all, as a canon lawyer, I would say that Eugene is 100% a "company man" and would do anything his seniors in the Church would ask him to do. I imagine that he has an unquestioning faith in the Roman Catholic Church. Personally I think that is a bad thing.

Currently he is Bishop Treanor's right hand man. Priests I have talked to about Eugene tell me that when it comes to Treanor - Eugene - is HMV - his master's voice.

Is Eugene ambitious for promotion? I would say that Eugene is not without ambition and aspiration - but he is not absolutely driven by it like some others. I think he would like to be rewarded for his faithfulness and work but if he is not he will continue doing his duties well.

Will he be a bishop? I think he has a good chance of becoming a bishop. In fact the priests of Down and Connor would certainly prefer him to be their new auxiliary bishop rather than a certain Father Bartlett.

The problem is that if Eugene became a bishop where would Noel Treanor find a work horse like him to do all his duties?

Recently I wrote to Noel Treanor via Eugene about my invitation to attend the diocesan Year of Mercy event and I had an email from Eugene telling me that I was not invited:

Dear Pat, thanks for your email re the forthcoming Conference in Dromantine. I  have advised the Bishop of same and have, at his request,  checked with the Living Church office. 

The Living Church office issued postal invitations to the clergy of the diocese and I can confirm your name was not included in the list of invited clergy and the office has no record of a letter being sent to you. I can only reasonably conclude that the invitation you received is not genuine. 

I'm grateful to you Pat for checking with the Diocese about the correspondence you received and I trust this clarifies things for you. 

Sincerely

Eugene

A priest I showed it to said to me: "Pat that is one of the nicest ways I ever heard anyone being told to F... Off"  :-)

So we should not think that Eugene is totally bereft of muscle under that pallid skin. 

If Eugene attacked you the attack would feel more like a cat scratch than a dog bite :-)

ST PETER'S CATHEDRAL - TV INVESTIGATION.

ST PETER'S CATHEDRAL - TV INVESTIGATION.

St Peter's Cathedral, Belfast

I can confirm today that an independent TV film company is well into making an hour long programme about the situation at St Peter's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Falls Road, Belfast.

The preparations for the programme began some six months ago and in the past few weeks the film company's researchers have been visiting the homes of people in the parish area of the Lower Falls Road.

The producer and researcher have also spoken "off the record" to several Down and Connor priests and while most of them have refused to take part in the programme - out of fear of recriminations - one cleric to date has agreed that his person and statements will be shown and heard through the use of an actor with voice over. 

I have had one meeting with a researcher and have agreed in principle to be interview for the programme - both as a former curate of the cathedral (1978 - 1983) and as someone who has been spoken to by people with issues arising out of the historic and current situation in St Peter's. 

Apparently the programme is to be quite wide ranging. Is may deal with the case of the Cathedral Manager and Parish Scout Leader Martin Kerr who was twice imprisoned for abusing altar boys and scouts - one of his victims committing suicide. 

Martin Kerr - Cathedral Manager and Scout Leader

It may go on to deal with the removal of former curate, Fr Joe McGuigan over issues of homosexuality and later concerns at a parish shelter for homeless men in Albert Street. 

It will almost certainly deal with the most recent scandal of another St Peter's curate - Father Dallat - who not only had an affair with a women but made the woman pregnant.

Included in this will be an examination of how the current bishop, Noel Treanor, dealt with the case and with the woman when she was referred to him personally. 

Bishop Noel Treanor

According to parishioners the programme researchers are particularly interested in the issue of a Cathedral Choir Boy scandal that occurred on a choir trip to London.

As a result of this trip the cathedral administrator, Father Hugh Kennedy, was investigated in both a police and an internal church enquiry and having been cleared by both bodies was returned to the Cathedral by Bishop Treanor. 

Dean Hugh Kennedy

The programme makers are asking questions about the resignation of the Choir Boys assistant organist and child protection officer - Ms Helen Frame - after the London trip.

One D&C PP sent a comment to this Blog overnight which read:

"Type into Youtube "NI Choirboys" and you will be treated to all the episodes of the disturbing St Peter's Choirboys series staring ...........................  This was filmed of  course before the infamous debacle in London with .......and .......early morning drunken brawl clad in their smalls tumbling out of a shared room before an audience of minors after a night on the tiles. I hope Helen Frame is being interviewed for the forthcoming programme. She resigned and was the Child Protection Officer for St Peter's Choir. Who has replaced her!

AS A MATTER OF INTEREST - DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO HAS REPLACED MS FRAME?


All in all it seems that for decades now St Peter's has lurched from one scandal to another. 

One scandal in any particular parish is almost inevitable but people are asking why there has been such a succession of problems in St Peters.

People are also asking is St Peter's being neglected because it is smack in the middle of a working and indeed unemployed area. Is such a situation "good enough" for the poor?

Others are saying: "If all these things had happened in the parish of St Brigid's on Belfast leafy Malone Road - where the Catholic "great and good" live - would it be tolerated. 

St Brigid's - Malone Road - No scandals ???

These questions can only be ultimately answered by the Down and Connor diocesan authorities - and by Bishop Treanor in particular.

Noel, if I were you I would be waiting for a knock on my palace door and some TV cameras on my lawn.

HISTORIC CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN DOWN AND CONNOR

HISTORIC CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN DOWN AND CONNOR

In recent days the name of Father Thomas Cunningham came up in this Blog in the context of historic sexual abuse in the Diocese of Down and Connor. 

Father Cunningham was a curate in St Teresa's Parish in Belfast and later parish priest of St Agnes' Parish in Andersonstown. 

If you google Father Cunningham you will find that as parish priest of St Agnes' he set up two schools - one for girls and one for boys. 

Thanks to the generosity of the St Agnes’ parishioners and the efforts of the then Parish Priest, Rev Fr Thomas Cunningham, the Andersonstown and wider community were provided with the two new schools for boys and girls. From the outset Sr Mona Lally, our first principal, set high standards for the girls. She decided at an early stage to prepare our girls for public examinations, which was progressive thinking for its day since our school was then a secondary intermediate and as such was considered only to cater for girls who had been refused a grammar place.

You will also discover that he was a fire and brimstone preacher and preached strict morals to his parishioners.

_{Fr. cunningham in st.agnes was fire and brimstone.}

When he was a curate in St Teresa's he also set up a boys scout group.

IS THIS FR CUNNINGHAM WITH HIS SCOUTS?

Sadly there seems to have been a "darker" and more "tragic" side to Father Cunningham's love for schoolboys, scouts and altar boys.

He lived in a big house on the Andersonstown Road and it was always full of boys. The rule seems to have been that all boys visiting the house had to strip down to their underpants and had to stay that way for the time they were in the house. Father Cunningham used to sit in an armchair and the boys would take turns sitting on his knee. 

As a reward Father Cunningham left the Sunday Collection plate out and when leaving the boys were given permission to take money from it to go and buy sweets. 

Then a new curate came to live with Father Cunningham - Father James Doyle who came on loan to Down and Connor from Wexford. He became involved in the underwear, sitting on knees and taking money for sweets.

Sadly Father Doyle went on to more serious forms of abusing boys in St Agnes. I have spoke to one of his victims. But I fear there are many other victims of Father Cunningham and Father Doyle out there :-(

Father Doyle was later prosecuted in the Republic for other instances of abuse and dismissed from the priesthood.  He featured quite prominently in the FERNS REPORT.

1.   Handling of Sex Abuse Cases Main Difficulty Left for Bishop
The Irish Times - Saturday, March 2, 1996 By ANDY POLLAK

2.   AT his press conference on Wednesday, the Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey, said he had become aware of allegations of child sex abuse against priests "almost immediately" after he arrived in Ferns in 1984.

3.   There were, in fact, already complaints on file in the bishop's house.

4.   Eighteen months earlier, in October 1982, the professor of psychology at University College, Dublin, Father Fechim O'Docherty, had written to Dr Comiskey's predecessor, Dr Donal Herlihy, recommending that Father James Doyle a Wexford curate who eight years later would be convicted of indecent assault on a teenage boy should be kept away from young people.

5.   Father O'Docherty wrote that Father Doyle, whom he had interviewed, was "a clear example of mollifies, which my dictionary says means, in a bad sense, weakness, effeminacy.

6.   He said Father Doyle had a history of "auto eroticism and both homosexual and heterosexual behaviour". He "did not face up to celibacy in any realistic sense".

7.   It was "desirable that he should have a change of role, away from working with young people", concluded the psychologist.

8.   Around the same time a Wexford parish priest, worried about an alleged incident involving improper behaviour by Father Doyle towards an altar boy, communicated his concern to Dr Herlihy.

9.   In June 1990 Dr Comiskey was informed that Father Doyle, then a curate in Clonard parish in Wexford town, was being charged with indecent assault against a boy in his early teens, an offence committed the previous April.

10.                The bishop relieved him of his pastoral duties and he went to a specialised clinic in England for treatment.

11.                He pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence the following November.

12.                Asked on Wednesday if the diocese had any prior information or professional advice about the risk Father Doyle might pose to young people, and if any priest had warned him about such a risk, Dr Comiskey said there bad been "a letter from a counsellor" but his recollection was that it did not mention risk to children.

FATHER CHARLIE AGNEW - PARISH PRIEST - ST MICHAEL'S ANDERSONSTOWN

Father Charlie Agnew, a priest of Down and Connor taught in the diocesan college at Garron Tower. 

He later became the parish priest of St. Michael's in Andersonstown. 

Presbytery - St Michael's Andersonstown

The notorious paedophile priest JAMES DONAGHY was his curate.

‘DONAGHY ALWAYS HAD BOYS INSIDE THE HOUSE’

By Francesca Ryan

The housekeeper of a former West Belfast priest jailed for sex abuse says he reacted angrily when she had asked him to stop bringing children to the  parochial house in the 1980s. James Martin Donaghy, 53, from Lady Wallace Drive in Lisburn, was convicted of 23 sex abuse charges against a young adult and two teenage altar boys.  On Friday past he was handed a 10-year sentence at Belfast Crown Court.

The trial, which ended in December, saw the three victims give evidence against the priest, describing him as “domineering and controlling”. Now his housekeeper, who does not wish to be named, paints a similar picture of a man she calls “a manipulator”.

James Donaghy

The woman lived in the parochial house at St Michael the Archangel church on Finaghy Road North in the mid-1980s where she cared for ailing priest Fr Charlie Agnew. Donaghy, who stepped down from the priesthood in 2004, was also living in the house at the time.

“This story has made me physically sick,” she said.  “I knew he was arrogant and ignorant but this is sickening. “I lived in the house with him in 1984 to look after Fr Agnew who was ill. Fr Donaghy was there but it was Fr Agnew who employed me.

“Fr Donaghy always had kids in the house and I remember saying to him about it because Fr Agnew was a diabetic and he had a bad heart, he wouldn’t have been fit for all that.  I asked that man to stop bringing kids to the house and he snapped back that he was there before me and just walked out and slammed the door.  He was so ignorant to me from then on.” The woman recalled how Donaghy never let her into his bedroom to clean up.

“I looked after Fr Agnew and that… thing,” she said.  “I fed him and cleaned his clothes but I was never allowed into his bedroom, he never let me clean it, he always said he would do it himself. With what I now know, I can’t even begin to imagine what was in there.”

Alarmingly, the housekeeper says the shamed  priest was constantly involved in projects with local schoolchildren. “There were boys in the house two or three times a week, always boys, never girls.  I never saw girls at the parochial house,” she said.  “He was always working with children and was never out of the school [St John the Baptist]. The day Fr Agnew died, the nurse rang the parochial house looking for Fr Donaghy to tell him the news. He was at the school, of course. If there was anything to do with the kids, he was there, scouts and everything.”

She described the several different personalities of Donaghy that she encountered during her time at St Michael’s parochial house. “He was very immature and used to wear a scout’s tie around the house, but there was also a really arrogant side to him and he thought he was above everyone else.

Scouts Scarf

“He never liked to be told he was wrong, he would be quite moody and was always slamming doors. He made me feel like dirt on the bottom of his shoe. He had a thing about women, he would be quite rude to them, it was only boys he was interested in. But there was one lady who used to buy him gifts and he totally led her on. This man was a total manipulator and I think he would’ve charmed those kids. It’s disgusting.”

On the death of Fr Agnew in 1985, the woman moved out of the house, leaving Fr Donaghy alone. She was visibly upset to think about what may have taken place not only while she was there, but after she left. “I left when Fr Agnew died and he would have had the house to himself for about six weeks. I dread to think what was going on. I’m glad Fr Agnew didn’t hear about this when he was alive because it would have killed him. There is no way this is about three children,” she adds.  “There were kids coming and going all the time so I feel there will be more cases coming out of the woodwork. It’s sickening to think I looked after that bastard. I would love to face him now and tell him that he is something from the bottom of my shoe.”

As well as the 10-year jail term, the judge ordered that Donaghy remain on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life and he also imposed a 15-year Sexual Offences Prevention Order, barring him from being alone with children, working with children, or living in accommodation without approval.

FATHER AGNEW was not without problems of his own. I know one young man who went to confession to him in St Michael's and confessed masturbation. After confession Father Agnew brought him over to the presbytery and examined his privates "to make sure he had not damaged himself " when masturbating.

Its very strange that these two men and their curates had similar problems. I have heard of a few other such cases. 

Who knew about all this?  One contributor to this Blog said: "Ask Bishop Walsh"?

Paddy Walsh -in Garron Tower

Walsh grew up in Andersonstown when Father Cunningham was on the go. He taught in Garron Tower when Charlie Agnew was there. He seems to be very friendly with James Donaghy. How much did he and does he know?

Are there files on this historic abuse in Lisbreen? Have these files been handed over to the authorities?

If there are victims out there who is believing them and helping them?