IRELAND
U.S. Catholic
Monday, April 9, 2012
By Michael Kelly Catholic News Service
DUBLIN (CNS) — The Irish Association of Catholic Priests said it is “disturbed” that the group’s founder, Redemptorist Father Tony Flannery, is under investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In an April 9 statement, the priests’ association — which represents about 20 percent of Ireland’s 4,000 priests — affirmed “in the strongest possible terms our confidence in and solidarity with Father Flannery, and we wish to make clear our profound view that this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise.”
The statement said the group “is disturbed” that Father Flannery is being “silenced.”
“We believe that such an approach, in its individual focus on Father Flannery and inevitably, by implication, on the members of the association, is an extremely ill-advised intervention in the present pastoral context in Ireland,” the statement said.
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