Brady recovers after collapsing during Mass
The country’s most senior Catholic cleric took ill during prayers at a ceremony in Kildress, Co Tyrone.
While the Lord’s Prayer was being recited, the 71-year-old cardinal, who has a history of blood pressure problems, began to feel weak.
Cardinal Brady has been under intense pressure in the last month after admitting holding secret interviews with two young victims of one of the Church’s most heinous sex abusers, the late Brendan Smyth, in the 1970s.
Fr Patrick Hughes, parish priest of Kildress, said Cardinal Brady began feeling weak towards the end of the Confirmation Mass, shortly before 6pm.
Up to six members of the packed congregation came to the cardinal’s aid as he began feeling unwell, including a number of nurses.
He sat on the altar chair and he was brought water but he was feeling so uncomfortable had to be placed on the ground before eventually being taken away by ambulance.
“But he remained conscious at all times,” Fr Hughes said, who had to finish the Mass.
He never lost consciousness and was said to have been very alert when taken by ambulance to hospital in Craigavon.
A spokesman for the cardinal said he was admitted to the hospital for observation and “he is in a comfortable condition”.
In the wake of the Murphy report into the rape and molestation of 320 children by 46 priests in the Dublin Archdiocese and related scandals, there have been repeated calls for Cardinal Brady’s resignation.
Last month, the Irish Church’s leader admitted being at a meeting where children abused by notorious convicted sex offender Brendan Smyth were forced to take a vow of silence.
Cardinal Brady apologised for his role in the Church tribunal on allegations made by a 14-year-old boy against Smyth, the rapist whose case brought down the Government in 1994.
The churchman said his apology was to anyone who had been hurt by any failure on his part.
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