Ferns has a big lesson for Cloyne: There has to be a change at the top

BECAUSE I am not a Catholic, I was reluctant to wade into the Bishop Magee controversy. The Ferns diocese in Co Wexford went through a decade of turmoil, which Cloyne is now experiencing. We discovered more than 100 individual allegations of clerical sexual abuse between 1962 and 2002. These involved 21 priests.

I maintained a friendship with a number of priests and knew Bishop Comiskey well. He pioneered a number of genuine ecumenical initiatives — not least in the area of mixed marriages. He was sociable, witty and a good communicator.

He resigned in 2002 as Bishop of Ferns. This was the correct decision. His crucial mistakes were that he was too reliant on legal advice and naive about perpetrators of clerical abuse. The late Fr Seán Fortune was the most manipulative and devious of abusers.