McAleese says Vatican silencing of priests is ‘consuming the truth’

Former president Mary McAleese has decried the Church’s treatment of five silenced priests, accusing Rome of operating through fear and imposing strictures on the clerics which “consume the truth”.

Speaking at the launch of her first book Quo Vadis? Collegiality in the Code of Canon Law since leaving Áras an Uachtaráin, the former head of state described Marist Fr Seán Fagan and Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery as “good men who have loved this Church with a passion”.

They were now living through a time when they were being asked whether they were “real Catholics” she said, a development she described as “dreadful”.