IRELAND
Irish Times
Barry Roche
A former priest in the Diocese of Cloyne in Co Cork has lost a personal appeal to Pope Francis against his dismissal from the priesthood after the pontiff found a canonical court was right to defrock him for “the crime of abusing minors”.
Dan Duane (78) had already lost two appeals against a decision by the Canonical Court in Ireland to dismiss him from the priesthood after it found he had abused five girls while serving as a priest in north Cork in the 1970s and 1980s.
A native of Doneraile in Co Cork, Mr Duane was ordained a priest in 1963 and served in a variety of parishes, as well as at St Colman’s College in Fermoy.
He was twice tried at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on counts of sexually abusing teenage girls in north Cork in the early 1980s. He was acquitted on the first occasion in May 2011 on the direction of the trial judge and in November 2011 he was acquitted by a jury.
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