IRELAND
RTE News
It has emerged that the Diocese of Kilmore allowed paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth to return to hearing confession and saying Mass in public in 1984.
This came nine years after a 1975 inquiry led to him being banned from doing so. Cardinal Sean Brady, then a priest, participated in that inquiry.
According to a statement issued to RTÉ News this evening by the current Bishop of the diocese, Dr Leo O’Reilly, in 1984 Smyth asked the then Bishop, the late Dr Francis MacKiernan, to lift the ban.
Following consultations with the then Abbott of Smyth’s monastery, Bishop MacKiernan acceded to Smyth’s request.
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