A long-serving bishop has sparked a storm of controversy over his fitness for the job after revealing he once thought paedophilia was “friendship gone too far”.

The Catholic Church is losing its best priests because they can’t get married, supporters of a cleric forced to retire after fathering a child today claimed.

Parishioners of an elderly Co Galway priest were in shock today after learning he had fathered a child with a woman half his age.