IRELAND
RTE News

A Co Galway-based Catholic Bishop who moved two priests who abused children to different parishes in the 1990s has apologised for appearing to minimise the gravity of their crimes.

In a weekend message to the diocese of Clonfert, Bishop John Kirby said that it was never his intention to do so in a recent media interview.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s News at One on 5 September, Bishop Kirby said his understanding of paedophilia in the mid-1990s was that it was “a friendship that had gone astray or wrong”.

In a message, published today, the Bishop says that, unfortunately, the words he used on air, when separated from their context, came across negatively.