IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Thursday, August 04, 2016
Joe Leogue
A former senior dean at St Patrick’s College Maynooth said he has a sense of “déjà vu” when reading of the current culture at the college and that he was “shafted” by his superiors when he raised concerns about complaints made against a vice-president there in the 1980s.
In 2005, the Ferns Inquiry found it was “entirely understandable” that Fr Gerard McGinnity felt he was victimised as a result of his raising the concerns of seminarians.
The report detailed how seminarians had expressed concerns over the “allegedly extravagant lifestyle” and “alleged sexual orientation and propensity” of Monsignor Micheal Ledwith, who was vice-president at the college at the time.
Fr McGinnity said reports this week of a culture of secrecy and gay dating at Maynooth had features of what occurred in the college when he raised his complaints.
“It sounds and reads like a déjà vu in many respects, because I can see the features of what occurred 30 years ago repeated in a lot of the narrative about it,” he told RTÉ’s News at One.
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