IRELAND
Irish Independent
Nicola Anderson
PUBLISHED
03/08/2016
The following are excerpts from an interview Archbishop Diarmuid Martin gave on ‘RTÉ News One’ yesterday.
‘There is a tradition that there were no Dublin students in Maynooth for a long time. But on this particular occasion, I was somewhat unhappy and I made this decision some months ago, that there was an atmosphere growing in Maynooth and which you would learn about through anonymous accusations made, letters and blogs, accusing people of either misconduct or accusing the faculty of Maynooth of not treating allegations correctly. And I felt that a quarrelsome attitude was not the healthiest place for my students to be and I decided to send them to the Irish College in Rome.”
In response to a question that his decision was due to a quarrelsome attitude among staff in Maynooth:
“No, coming from a whole series of anonymous allegations being passed around and this was on blogs. Some of the material has resulted to be true, but the trouble with anonymous complaints is that it’s almost impossible to investigate them and carry them through to success from my point of view in the seminary.
“I simply felt that type of quarrelsome attitude and a culture of anonymous letters is poisonous and until that’s cleared up, I would be happier sending my students elsewhere.
“The allegations are that a homosexual, gay culture (exists), that students (are) using an app called Grindr, a gay dating app, which would be inappropriate for seminarians. Not just because they are training to be priests but an app like that is something which would be fostering promiscuous sexuality, which is certainly not in any way the mature vision of sexuality you would expect a priest to understand.
“Then there are people saying anyone who tries to go to the authorities with an allegation, that they’re being dismissed from the seminary.
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