UNITED STATES/IRELAND/ZAMBIA/UNITED KINGDOM
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Bernard Lynch was ordained in his native Ireland for the Society of African Missions in 1971. After a short stint in Zambia, he was sent to New York to study counseling and psychotherapy. While in New York he assisted at a Bronx parish and was chaplain for a private boys’ school, Mount St. Michael’s. He also became involved with the support group for gay Catholics, Dignity, and ministered in the 1980s to men dying of AIDS.
In July 1987 Lynch became the subject of a criminal investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse, after Mount St. Michael’s teachers filed a complaint that he and acting principal, Marist Brother Timothy Brady, were possibly molesting students. Both were charged; Brady was convicted. Lynch was tried in April 1989 on charges of molesting one Mount St. Michael’s student in 1985 or 1986. Lynch’s attorney said it was the boy who made a pass at Lynch. Lynch strongly denied the accusation and claimed he was the victim of a witch-hunt by the church because of his AIDS ministry. He was found not guilty.
Lynch moved in 1992 to England where he started a ministry for closeted gay priests. He was expelled from his order in 2011 and, in a 2012 memoir, he announced that he had been married to a man for fourteen years. In April 2017 Lynch works independently as a counselor and spiritual director. He has not been laicized.
Ordained: 1971
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.