IRELAND
The Irish Times
PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
IT WAS June 7th, 2001, at the cathedral in Cavan town and the Catholic primate Archbishop (as he still was) Seán Brady was in jovial mood. At a Mass marking the golden jubilee of the ordination of his old boss Bishop Francis McKiernan, who retired in 1998, he began a warm tribute by saying he was “tempted to offer the prayer of the man who fell into the vat of stout in Guinness’s brewery. He prayed, ‘Lord give me a mouth worthy of this glorious opportunity’.”
Archbishop Brady recalled that it was “some 49 years since I first met the then Fr McKiernan. He was in St Patrick’s College, [Cavan] for the second time, I, for the first – he as teacher, I as student”. As Fr Brady, he returned to teach at St Patrick’s in 1967 and was there until 1980. During that time he was secretary to Bishop McKiernan, based too in Cavan town. In 1975, Fr Brady conducted the two inquiries which led to faculties to minister in Kilmore diocese being withdrawn from child abuser Brendan Smyth.
But apart from the teacher-pupil, bishop-secretary relationship he had with Bishop McKiernan, in June 2001 Archbishop Brady had another reason to be grateful to his old mentor. Bishop McKiernan had kept his name out of the loop when the sky fell in following the 1994 jailing of Fr Brendan Smyth in Belfast.
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