Clerical scandals - Church must tackle issue of celibacy

The resignation of Fr Maurice Dillane, 73, as curate in the Woodford-Looscaun parish of Galway has again rocked the Catholic Church, which seems to be lurching from one crisis to another in recent years.

This is the third such scandal in this country since Bishop Eamonn Casey announced in 1992 that he had fathered a child 17 years earlier as Bishop of Kerry.

In January 1994 the news broke that the late Fr Michael Cleary, who had died some weeks earlier, had fathered a son.