‘Incomprehensible, inexcusable. I apologise’

HORROR, hurt, incomprehension. And that was just how the bishop felt.

Three and a half years after he arrived to take over the poisoned chalice of the Diocese of Ferns, Apostolic Administrator Eamonn Walsh stood in the aged Parochial House in Gorey, trying to exorcise the ghosts of the past.

His trouble was that the ghosts were still living. He met 37 of the victims of paedophile priests in the diocese face to face over the last three and a half years and knew their true number was mulitples more.