Bishop Drennan under mounting pressure to resign

THE Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, is coming under increased pressure to reverse his decision not to resign due to the findings of the Murphy report into cleric child sex abuse in Dublin.

Yesterday abuse campaigner Andrew Madden, the Author of Altar Boy, A Story of Life After Abuse, emailed the bishop asking him to formally invite 60 clerical victims to meet him and discuss his position.

Mr Madden said: “Bishop Drennan advises against anger and adds insult to injury when he describes our calls for accountability as vengeful. He says he met with 60 priests from the Diocese of Galway and seems to enjoy their full support. I have asked him to formally invite 60 victims of sexual abuse by priests in Dublin to come and meet him in Galway to express their views.”

He added: “I reiterate my call for Bishop Martin Drennan to resign.”

The editor of the influential Irish Catholic newspaper, Gary O’Sullivan, also questioned Bishop Drennan’s logic in not resigning when the four other men who served as auxiliary bishops in the Dublin diocese during the period overed in the Murphy Report have offered their resignations.

“It is a difficult position for the bishop. He says he wasn’t named in the report and no part of it was sent to him. He also says he did nothing wrong, however Bishop Field and Bishop Walsh were in a similar position and they have offered their resignations. If there is ‘collective responsibility’ it’s difficult to see how he can hold on,” he said.

Dr Drennan served as auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1997 to 2005. He is mentioned in the report in connection with reports of inappropriate behaviour relating to Fr Guido, which involved male teenagers in 2002 and 2003.

On Christmas Eve two other former Dublin’s auxiliary bishops, Dr Eamonn Walsh and Dr Raymond Field, resigned. This followed the resignations of Bishop Donal Murphy and Bishop James Moriarty.

Mr O’Sullivan added “more needed to be heard from Cardinal Desmond Connell” who was the Bishop of Dublin for much of the time covered by the Murphy Report.

Bishop Drennan’s diocesan communications manager Fr Seán McHugh stated at the weekend that his superior “does not intend to resign”.

“Dr Drennan’s case was different to that of the other four bishops mentioned in the report, in that he wasn’t asked to appear before Judge Murphy’s commission,” he added.

In his Christmas Day homily, Bishop Drennan spoke of the “darkness of recent times”.

“I suppose we have rarely seen so much anger in Irish society as we have seen over the past couple of months,” he said, and the biggest challenge now was to “understand our past, to forgive mistakes, to learn from them”.