Fellow clergy welcome priests’ dismissal

THE Irish Conference of Priests has welcomed the dismissal by the Pope of two members of the clergy convicted of sexual abuse.

The priests, James Doyle and Donal Collins, had worked in the Ferns diocese. Collins was given a four-year sentence in 1998, with three years then suspended, for incidents of sexual abuse against boys which took place in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1990, Doyle was convicted of indecent assault on a teenage boy in 1990 and received a suspended sentence of one year.