Archbishop: It’s a pity Magee isn’t here to answer questions

ARCHBISHOP Dermot Clifford said he’d have been “very happy” if Bishop John Magee was standing in front of the press responding to questions on the Cloyne report instead of him.

“I’d be very happy if he was sitting here in this seat and it’s a pity that he isn’t,” the visibly-shaken archbishop said at a press conference in Cork yesterday.

The diocese’s caretaker bishop, who is also the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, described himself as “having distanced himself from John Magee” in recent years and hadn’t any contact with him recently.