IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Caroline O’Doherty
A relationship with a troubled teenage girl and the subsequent accusation of sex assault — of which he was cleared — has left a priest with a battle on his hands, writes Caroline O’Doherty
Fr Chris Conroy had a saying when he was living in the Andes Mountains in Peru: “Canon law doesn’t apply above 10,000 feet.”
By that, he meant the formal structures and strictures of the Catholic Church took second place to the practicalities of survival in a harsh environment among people living a primitive existence in grinding poverty, stalked by a guerrilla insurgency.
Back at sea level in his native Wicklow, however, Church law very much holds sway and Fr Conroy has found himself in difficulties for challenging it.
The 81-year-old entered the priesthood through the Carmelite Friary in Kinsale and after his ordination in 1959 he was based at the Order’s Whitefriar Street community in Dublin.
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