Trainee priests in gay app row

Allegations of homosexuality and the use of a gay dating app are the reasons why Archbishop Diarmuid Martin will no longer send trainee priests to the seminary in Maynooth.

“One [allegation] is that there is a homosexual, a gay culture, that students have been using an app called Grindr, which is a gay dating app which would be inappropriate for seminarians not just because they’re training to be celibate priests but because an app like that is something that would be fostering promiscuous sexuality— which is certainly not in any way the mature vision of sexuality that one would expect priests to understand,” Archbishop Martin said yesterday.

He was explaining his decision not to send trainee priests from Dublin to the national seminary this autumn. It comes at the same time as anonymous accusations were being made about the seminary, some of which included allegations of whistleblowers being dismissed and acts of sexual abuse.

“A culture of anonymous letters is poisonous. Until that’s cleared up, I’d be happier sending my students elsewhere,” said Archbishop Martin.

The Association of Catholic Priests issued a statement last night saying it “regrets that the seminary at Maynooth College has become a focus of unfair and unwarranted attention”.

It said the “anti-Maynooth issue” was being driven by a number of “agendas”, such as commentators in Catholic newspapers, writers of blogs, and former students who were deemed unsuitable for the priesthood.