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	Exclusive: Anger As Scandal Priest Marries "Friend" By David Taylor Sunday Mail October 18, 2009 http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/10/18/exclusive-anger-as-scandal-priest-marries-friend-78057-21756063/ A FORMER Catholic priest yesterday married a woman he denied having an affair with 13 years ago. Father John Murphy, 45, caused a scandal when he went on holiday with Mary Gormanley in 1996. As well as the Malta break, Mary, who is five years his junior, also stayed overnight at his chapel house. When Murphy quit the priesthood five years ago, he again denied it was anything to do with her. But yesterday the couple tied the knot at the Western House Hotel at Ayr Racecourse. A source close to Mary's family yesterday claimed the marriage fuelled suspicions the pair have always been a couple. The source said: "There are a lot of people who still aren't happy and think he has been deceitful all along, to his parishioners and to both families. "It was 1996 when we found out about them spending nights together, thanks to the Sunday Mail, but they denied anything was going on and people had to accept that was the truth. "It wasn't until 2004 that he left his parish. "Throughout those eight years when he was still a priest, he kept maintaining nothing was going on. This wedding hasn't gone down well with some of the family and it won't impress some of his former parishioners either." Murphy was formerly the priest at St Quivox Church in Prestwick, Ayrshire. At the time he and Mary, then a law clerk, were first linked, the Catholic church branded suggestions of an affair as "offensive". Murphy went to university after quitting the priesthood and is understood to have trained as a psychiatric nurse. He was said to have already moved in with Mary in her home village ofDalmellington, Ayrshire, before the wedding. The couple declined to comment.
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