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	Abuse Priest Worked at Southern Hospitals By Olivia Kelleher The Irish Times April 3, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0403/1224267629087.html THE MERCY University Hospital (MUH) in Cork yesterday confirmed that paedophile priest Brendan Smyth worked at the facility for a short period in the early 1990s. A spokesman for MUH said the then Southern Health Board set up a process to discover whether his temporary chaplaincy at a number of hospitals had led to any issues of concern. For a period of five or six months in 1992/1993, Smyth worked as a temporary chaplain at MUH and Tralee General Hospital. During his chaplaincy, he prayed with the sick and issued the last rites. Yesterday, a spokesman for MUH said Smyth’s chaplaincy at the hospital was brief and intermittent, and that the then Southern Health Board launched an inquiry into the matter. “The Southern Health Board fully disclosed details of Brendan Smyth’s presence in a number of hospitals and provided a helpline to facilitate calls, queries or concerns. No issues of concern were reported to MUH arising from that process.” The HSE has also confirmed that Smyth’s time at Tralee General Hospital was quite brief. No investigations are ongoing regarding his work at either the Cork or Kerry hospitals. Smyth was at the centre of one of the first paedophile priest scandals to hit the Catholic Church in Ireland. In 1994, in a Belfast court, he was convicted of 17 counts of sexual abuse. Three years later, in Dublin, he pleaded guilty to another 74 counts of child sexual abuse. He died in prison later that year, 1997, of a heart attack. The priest, who was born in Belfast in 1927, was a member of the Norbertine Order. He targeted vulnerable children living in orphanages and boarding schools, and even molested youngsters in their family homes while their parents were in another room. As a priest in the Falls Road area of Belfast, he targeted four children from the same family. It was their reporting of the abuse that led to his first conviction.
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