UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday
Bishop has affair with married parishioner …then quits in shame over ANOTHER romance: Bishop of Arundel admits to relationship that broke clerical vows
By ADAM LUCK and JONATHAN PETRE FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
One of the country’s leading Roman Catholic bishops resigned ‘in shame’ today after admitting to a relationship that broke his clerical vows.
In a scandal that will rock the Church, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Kieran Conry, said he had been ‘unfaithful to his promises’.
Separately, a Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed the bishop also had a love affair with a married mother of two.
This newspaper has seen love letters between Bishop Conry, 63, and the woman, written in recent months, in which he tells her that her husband doesn’t love her.
One handwritten letter, which was dated earlier this month and addressed ‘Dear, Dear XXXXX’ and signed ‘your K xxxxxx’, said: ‘… It’s all right to say that [your husband] did bad things, but you knew that he didn’t love you. You know (I hope) that I did. And I did, and do.’
The passionate correspondence, using language reminiscent of the movie Brief Encounter, reveals the pair fell deeply in love and formed a strong emotional bond.
Although the letters do not disclose a sexual relationship, the affair lasted more than a year and involved the married woman spending at least three nights at the bishop’s detached property in Pease Pottage, West Sussex.
The Mail on Sunday has also seen a love letter from the bishop to a second woman, whose name we are not publishing for legal reasons.
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