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	Showboating Cleric Was There When It Mattered Father Michael Cleary Was Unpopular with His Colleagues but Was an Example to Them All, Writes Gareth O'Callaghan Irish Independent September 9, 2007 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/showboating-cleric- was-there-when-it-mattered-1074418.html In 1985, I was invited to go backstage during the interval of a sell-out gig so that I could meet the star of the show. He wasn't due to take front stage until well into the second half of the show and I presumed he had some time to kill. Tickets had sold out weeks in advance for the show in Bedfordshire, England. Fans had travelled from as far away as Coventry, Birmingham and Northampton. I'd met him before, many times, and had got to know him, professionally and personally, quite well. According to his fans, he was a power house of charisma and wit, with an entertainment rating of 10. He was regarded by many of the females there that night as "sexy". I was there to cover the show for the local BBC radio station where I worked at a time when to be Irish in England was about as fortuitous as being a black shoplifter in south Charleston. The venue wasn't a football stadium, or a concert arena, it was a quickly converted school gymnasium packed with orange plastic chairs. The audience comprised all ages, men and women, first- and second-generation Irish; the star in question wasn't Christy Moore or Brendan Shine, it was Father Michael Cleary, "the singing priest" as he was known by tens of thousands, and his group was The All Priests Show, and my "pass", that got me access all areas, was a humble cloakroom ticket.I was hoping to get "a few words" from Cleary for my radio show the following day. I was holding my tape recorder and microphone high in the air so that he might see me, and recognise me. However, the girl with the big breasts and the plunging neckline who was holding up the entire queue of "meet and greet" that were waiting patiently to shake hands with this Elvis-like deity, while she shared a smoke with him, meant that my interview that night would consist of: "Howya Gar ... I'm a bit stuck for time, so can we make it quick?" When I think back to that night, in the light of what became the headline-grabber in what's been a quiet news week, I can still vividly remember standing backstage that night; he stooped as we chatted, the smell of tobacco on his breath, the fag between his lips -- someone who clearly wore the same clothes day in, day out and never washed his teeth. But maybe that was part of the pious attraction: poverty, humility, the dirty, scraggy Jesus beard, the hoarse flat-Dublin accent, like some sort of pitiful homeless middle-aged man who swore that God was his salvation. But Cleary was far from humble and poor. He was the master of illusion. The All Priests Show made a packet- full of cash everywhere it went. It was the most over-priced, overrated show in town; but they got away with it because "money raised locally went to local charities", and we forgave the stupid one-liners and Paddy the Irishman jokes because the comedian wasn't an idiot, he was a priest. And not just that: he was an Irish priest taking the piss out of the Irish! None of these guys was remotely funny; none of them had a note in his head, with one exception -- Cleary. By now the show had become three shows, touring the world! Three different sets of priests were given dispensations from their bishops to be "away from parish duties". Singing ballads and telling jokes had become the new way of spreading the word of God. Some said the reason there were three different shows was because of the demand from venues; others would say that some of "the lads" found Cleary impossible to work with, and so cracks appeared. Half of them were riding, the other half were drinking -- like a bank holiday weekend on Craggy Island. Three sets of priests, none of them funny, none of them musically talented. It was like a horrible garish version of a poor man's Riverdance. Priests with lacquered hairstyles and cheap aftershave in full clerical garb singing Johnny Cash songs and telling gags; another played a button accordion and read out birthday requests off beer mats for grannies and homesick ex-pats in the audience. One rev rounded off his spot with a quick jig and a reel around the stage complete with kilt. They were different days. In hindsight I realise the only thing the show had going for it was Michael Cleary: its ringleader, manager, agent, talent scout, mentor, banker, goalkeeper and striker. These other poor misfits were only the warm-up act for the star attraction. There was no doubt Mick Cleary spent years carefully orchestrating his rise to fame. He will always remind me of actor Joe Pesci in that gripping scene in Goodfellas, where Tommy DeVito turns on Henry Hill because he thought he was being made a fool of. Cleary told his audience exactly how and when he wanted them to react, and they did. They were in a frenzy by the time he took to the stage. He was revered by the media back then. Gay Byrne regularly extolled the virtues of the show. They were frequently guests on The Late Late. They plugged their gigs from the pulpits. They got the biggest ads in the regional papers whenever their show came to town. Back in the days when RTE Radio 2 was 'cominatcha', DJs turned down gigs if they knew the All Priests Show was in the same town on the same night as they were booked to appear. If Cleary didn't like you, you weren't destined for stardom. You just stayed in your parish and said Mass. Priests were practically queuing up to be auditioned, like some sort of pontifical Simpsons-esque version of You're A Star. On stage, Cleary always reminded his rapturous audience that "God has a great sense of humour . . . He wants to hear you laughing," he'd shout over the thunderous applause. His audience reacted as if he were God. When Cleary made his entrance in front of a crowd of 800 adoring fans that night at five-past-ten, the roar of the crowd was almost a beatific experience for many. The front row of the gymnasium was reserved for the nuns and the priests -- latter-day VIPs. His content was the complete opposite of Tommy Tiernan's, but it delivered the same punch. He'd get a landslide laugh and then he'd light another fag on stage and cough until he'd cleared his chest. Here we had, for the first time in history, a priest who was saying Mass, telling harmless, slightly ribald jokes, teasing the nuns (who absolutely adored him), and getting away with using the word "feck" in his Sunday sermon and his nationwide retreats and novenas, while getting the packed congregations to join hands and sing Kumbaia. He was the man; he'd gigged with the Pope, and, "cooler" for the experience, was now gigging on my home stage. And, of course, in true superstar-status tradition, he played for no more than 35 minutes and left his audience begging and screaming for an encore. Unfortunately, there was another side to The All Priests Show. One of its then famous cast -- convicted paedophile Tony Walsh -- became infamous for what he got up to with young children in both his presbytery and his dressing room, and he has served time for perpetrating some of the most horrific sexual abuse on minors that the courts have ever heard. Others became alcoholics and gamblers; but mostly all of them became disillusioned with trying to be a superstar and a humble priest at the same time. Fame and humility despise each other, but not when it came to Mick Cleary. Once you have a plan, once you know what you're doing and who you are, you can mix both very effectively. Mick put his fame to good use. He may have been rearing a family, but he also opened his diocesan-owned house to Ballyfermot's messed-up young people in the late Seventies and Eighties: pregnant teenagers and drug addicts, and anyone who needed a roof and a bit of counselling and rearing. Mick Cleary never turned anyone away who needed help. There are a lot of people in Dublin in their 30s and 40s who wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for Cleary, just like there are many men in the priesthood today from the parish of Ballyfermot because this curate of theirs inspired them. His late-night radio show on 98FM in Dublin became compulsive listening, like an open confessional. Women would talk about the beatings they took from their drunk, abusive husbands. Young men would talk about homosexuality. Cleary gave them Ireland's first platform to talk from. He was the forerunner to LiveLine, but with more empathy, because he lived in the world of the people whose dysfunctional lives he was helping to sort out. He used words like "My Child," with each of his callers. Others wouldn't get away with such piety, but Mick did, because he knew what he was about. It was well-known in those days that not many of his fellow priests liked him. Maybe it was because he stood for everything they would like to have been and been brave enough to become, including a parent. Following his death, many priests breathed a sigh of relief; as if he had become some dark cloud that hung over their own little secrets. The reason his colleagues didn't like him was because he genuinely cared. If Ross Hamilton needs to blame someone for messing up such an important period in his life, then it should be Dermot Ryan, Dublin's archbishop of the time -- a man of extreme, imposing arrogance who was both utterly useless and bewilderingly removed from reality. Cleary gave his family a good home. Their prospects in the Ireland they lived in back then may not have been good, but I also believe that Cleary was aware of that too; and the cost they might have had to pay were Ryan to find out the real story was something Cleary wanted to avoid. In the same way that Cleary protected 16-year-old drug addicts, and prostitutes as young as 15 who took shelter in his house, I believe he was also trying to protect his son from the wrath of a bigoted, finger-pointing society. Not only was Dermot Ryan self-righteous, the majority of people in Ireland who went to Sunday Mass and kissed the bishop's ring suffered from much the same blight as he did. And reading what I've read, and listening to what I've heard this past week, I wonder has much changed.
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