GALWAY (IRELAND)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
July 22, 2025
By Jack Figge
The remains of Bishop Eamonn Casey have been removed from the cathedral crypt and returned to his family
The Diocese of Galway has removed a former bishop’s remains from the diocesan cathedral over allegations of sexual abuse.
In a statement released July 19, the Diocese of Galway announced that the remains of Bishop Eamonn Casey had been recently removed from the crypt of the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas and returned to his family for private burial.
Casey led the diocese from 1976 until 1992, when he stepped down after it was revealed he had fathered a child with a distant cousin. He died in 2017. Prior to his death he was accused of sexual abuse of minors, including by his own neice.
Prior to the removal, a priest led prayers for the dead over Casey’s remains. This decision had the cooperation and support of Casey’s family, according to the statement. The diocese has not released the date of the removal.
The removal of the bishop’s remains came after the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh & Kilfenora faced sustained criticism from Catholics in Ireland and in the media after a documentary aired in July 2024 documenting child abuse allegations against Casey and highlighting the continued internment of his body within the cathedral’s crypt.
Casey’s body is believed to be the first bishop’s remains to be removed from an cathedral due to sexual abuse allegations, though in 2019 the American Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts, moved the body of Bishop Christopher Weldon to a less prominent location within the diocesean cemetery after sexual abuse allegations made against him were deemed credible.
At the time of Casey’s death, some Irish Catholics and media outlets expressed outrage that be buried in the cathedral given his tumultuous past and multiple abuse allegations against him.
In July 2024, the criticisms were renewed after RTE aired the television documentary, “Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets” exploring Casey’s turbulent life, controversial burial, and highlighting the child abuse allegations against him.
The documentary included an interview with Patricia Donovan, Casey’s niece, who alleged that her uncle began raping her when she was five and that the abuse continued for years.
“He thought he could do what he liked, when he liked, how he liked… he was almost, like, incensed that I would dare fight against him, that I would dare try and hurt him, I would dare try and stop him… it didn’t make any difference… ,” Donovan told RTE in 2024.
The Diocese of Galway has said that it had received five complaints from individuals that accused Casey of sexually abusing them as children.
Following the documentary and with increased public interest, the An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police force, reopened an investigation into Casey, reviewing the case over the previous year. Last week, a Garda spokesperson said that it would “take no further investigative actions.”
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Casey, ordained a priest on June 17, 1951 for the Diocese of Limerick, Ireland, served as the Bishop of Kerry from 1969-1976 and then as the Bishop of Galway from 1976 until his abrupt resignation in 1992 after Irish newspapers revealed that he had an affair and fathered a child with a woman in 1973.
U.S. native Annie Murphy, a distant cousin to Casey, visited Galway in the early 1970s at the age of 25 after suffering a miscarriage and a recent divorce. While Casey served as the Bishop of Kerry, the two had an affair and she gave birth to a son Peter.
Casey encouraged Murphy to put the son up for adoption but she chose to keep the child and returned to the United States. Casey only met the son once, opting to send monthly child support payments of $275 ($1,702 adjusted for inflation) taken from a diocesan reserve account.
The affair and child were kept secret until 1990, when Murphy filed a paternity suit in New York, attempting to force Casey to pay thousands of dollars for Peter’s college education at the University of Connecticut. After negotiations faltered, Murphy went to the Irish press and revealed their affair and child.
Casey, at that point a charismatic and well-loved figure in the Irish Church, immediately sent a letter of resignation to Rome. It became the one of the first major clerical sexual scandals to rock the Church in Ireland.
After his resignation was accepted, Casey moved to the United States, living in a monastery for six months before the Vatican sent him to Ecuador to work with the Missionary Society of St. James the Apostle for six years.
In 1998, he moved to England and served as a priest in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, until retiring and returning to Ireland in 2006, where he served as a pastor at a rural parish in the Diocese of Galway, where he had previously served as bishop.
A year later, Casey was banned from all public ministry after multiple accounts of sexual abuse were made against him, including at least two involving minors.
In 2007, the Vatican barred him from public ministry but he did not seek laicization. No criminal charges were ever brought against the bishop, with police saying that they did not have enough evidence to proceed with a prosecution.
Casey died in 2017 at the age of 89. His funeral Mass was celebrated at the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas and attended by 11 bishops, dozens of priests, and 1600 laity. Following the Mass, Casey’s body was interred in the cathedral’s crypt alongside the bodies of Galway’s other deceased bishops.
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Following the 2024 documentary, which called for Casey’s body to be removed from the cathedral, Bishop Michael Duiganan, the current bishop of the Diocese of Galway, issued a statement about Casey’s controversial past.
“I am deeply aware that the content of recent media coverage concerning the life and legacy of Bishop Eamonn Casey is a source of anger and profound distress to many people, and in different ways. I share these feelings,” Duiganan said in 2024. “My priority is that any person who was betrayed or harmed by Bishop Casey is heard and that their experiences are appropriately acknowledged and recognised.”
However, the bishop did not address Casey’s burial place directly. In a subsequent statement, the Diocese of Galway said that, “the interment of the remains of Bishop Casey in the crypt beneath Galway Cathedral is a very sensitive issue that deeply affects people in different ways, and which has different facets.”
“The interment of Bishop Casey in the Cathedral crypt now requires a period of careful consideration and consultation, which has already begun.”
Following the removal of Casey’s remains, the Diocese of Galway issued another statement saying that the decision followed “an appeal for time and space […] to allow for appropriate reflection and consultation.”
“The Diocese would like to thank everyone for their understanding of the situation, for their patience and for their respect as this process was undertaken and brought to a conclusion. Significant consensus emerged around the unique role of a Cathedral as a place of unity rather than division, healing rather than hurt and peace rather than disquiet,” the statement continued.
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This is believed to be the first instance of a diocese removing the body of a bishop accused of sexual abuse from a diocesan cathedral.
Other dioceses have placed signs acknowledging a prelate’s controversial past or removed their names from diocesan owned properties and churches.
In 2020, the Archdiocese of Washington removed the coat of arms of disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington D.C.
The German archdiocese of Paderborn placed a sign by the tombs of Cardinal Lorenz Jaeger and Cardinal Johannes Joachim Degenhardt in the Cathedral’s crypt in 2023 acknowledging both cardinal’s failures to address the sexual abuse crisis.
“From today’s perspective, the archbishops buried here made serious mistakes in dealing with sexual abuse during their time in office. All too often they put the protection and reputation of the institution and the perpetrators above the suffering of the victims,” the sign reads.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that Bishop Louis Gelineau, the former bishop of the Diocese of Providence, had been moved out of a diocesan cemetery following accusations of abuse.
This was an error. The bishop was not subject to allegations of abuse and was buried in a family cemetery.
The Pillar exceedingly regrets the error.