Just hours before pledging support for his successor, the Bishop Emeritus of Cork and Ross was visiting the sick in Cork University Hospital, supporting, among others, a man from West Cork who had lost several fingers in a horrific lawnmower accident.

The Bishop of Cork and Ross John Buckley has invited the boards of management of three Cork city schools to a meeting to try to diffuse the row over plans by one of the schools to start enrolling junior infants.