IRELAND
The Belfast Telegraph
Broadcaster and writer Father Brian D'Arcy (60) is one of the Catholic church's best advertisments - and fiercest critics. He tells Janet Devlin about his anger over the church's child sex abuse scandals, why priests should be allowed to marry and how he's thought about giving up his ministry, butjust can't do it
19 December 2005
I don't know if Father Brian D'Arcy has a cv. But if he does, it might read: Superior of the Passionist Order, journalist, country music fan, and sometime thorn in the side of the Catholic church. The fact that he doesn't look or act particularly bloody-minded must make it difficult for detractors to paint him as the proverbial bad apple in the clerical barrel.
If Hollywood were to come a-knocking (with, say, a screenplay of his part in ransoming IRA kidnap victim John O'Grady, who had two fingers hacked off by the Border Fox in 1987) it's much more likely he would be played by Tom Courtenay, to whom he bears a passing resemblance, than Mickey Rourke.
And perhaps his quiet charm and fierce intelligence are just what the Catholic church, an organisation charged with bringing light and love into the world, needs in these dark days.
The sheer scale of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, as exposed by the recent Ferns Report, has shaken the church in Ireland to its very foundations.
Meanwhile, the church in the United States is being practically bankrupted by an avalanche of claims from young adults who suffered decades of abuse.