Fr Cleary less of a hypocrite than the media, Church leaders and society

THE late Fr Michael Cleary has been pilloried all week in the media since the riveting RTÉ documentary on Monday night.

“Cleary was always a fraud, far more interested in his own profile and feeding his gargantuan ego than in showing any humanity towards the people he wounded, despite his image as a man of the people,” Diarmaid Ferriter declared in this paper.

Words like liar and hypocrite flowed freely this week. His son Ross came across as a very articulate young man in an interview on the Marian Finucane radio programme. If he had not said so, you would not have known that he did not finish his secondary education.