IRELAND
Irish Central
Paddy Clancy @irishcentral July 04,2014
Public outrage has been prompted after a Dublin parish priest claimed there was no proof that Father Michael Cleary fathered two children by his housekeeper Phyllis Hamilton.
Even the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has strongly disassociated himself from the view expressed by Father Arthur O’Neill of Cabinteely.
Cleary, a prominent priest and singer who entertained the crowd while waiting for Pope John Paul II to arrive in Galway in 1979, died in 1993. Phyllis Hamilton died in 2001.
Two years after Cleary’s death it was revealed he had a son, Ross, with his housekeeper. She later revealed the couple had given another son up for adoption.
In his St. Brigid’s parish newsletter in Cabinteely last month O’Neill described the revelations as “exasperating,” unproven and the result of “shoddy practice” by named journalists, whom he challenged to prove them.
He suggested his former clerical colleague had suffered a serious injustice: “The burial of a person’s legacy deeper than their body just isn’t fair – if it’s based on a falsehood.”
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