Priest Who Backed Taoiseach on Abuse Related to Top Fg Strategist

By Jerome Reilly
Sunday Independent
April 8, 2012

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTrackerArchive/2012/04/#064748

[Enda Kenny's speech following publication of the Cloyne Report]

[click to view the story]

THE Redemptorist priest who has been silenced by Rome for publicly backing Taoiseach Enda Kenny's broadside against the Vatican's handling of child sex abuse allegations is a brother of leading Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery.

The censure of Fr Tony Flannery has provoked a storm of anger among fellow clergy and lay organisations.

Fr Flannery was censured by the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which first contacted the Redemptorist Order in Rome with an order that he no longer be allowed to write in the Irish Order's influential magazine Reality or on the Association of Irish Priests' website, of which he is a founding member.

He is also banned from talking to the media.

Fr Flannery visited Rome to argue his case after the rebuke two months ago.