Priest says compulsory celibacy must be reviewed in wake of report

A CATHOLIC priest removed from editing a church magazine after publishing articles about clerical child sex abuse has criticised the religious orders’ response to the Ryan Report.

Fr Kevin Hegarty, who fell foul of the bishops in 1993 when he was editor of Intercom, also said compulsory celibacy, the culture of authoritarianism and attitudes to sexuality in the Church must be reviewed in light of the report’s findings

“I expected the report to be devastating but it was even more devastating than I thought,” he told RTÉ. “It ends the argument that abuse was a failure of the system — abuse was the system.”