The Hierarchy has yet to ask the Vatican whether Bishop Eamonn Casey can be allowed home. Senior church sources in Rome indicate that before the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops can again consider the question of the former Bishop of Galway's return it must receive a specific request that he be allowed do so from the Irish Bishops' Conference.
Although it is believed possible that the Irish bishops may make such a request, it has not yet been made, the sources added.
The Congregation of Bishops is the Vatican department which oversees the appointment of all bishops throughout the Catholic world. In 1992 it accepted Dr Casey's resignation from the Galway diocese, following the announcement that he was the father of a child with Ms Annie Murphy. At the time of Dr Casey's resignation, the Congregation of Bishops urged him to find himself a low-profile pastoral role "outside Ireland or England".
Speculation about the former bishop's future has been fuelled in the last month by reports that the Irish bishops would be "supportive" and "sympathetic" to his desire to return to Ireland.
Now aged 70, Dr Casey is currently working in Ecuador on a fixed-term contract for the US-based Missionary Society of St James.
The former bishop's contract with the Society of St James expires in May and that fact, allied to health concerns involving kidney and bronchial problems, has led to further speculation about his future. Furthermore, recent ad-hoc opinion polls have suggested that upwards of 80 per cent of Irish people would have no objection to his homecoming.
Senior Curia sources in Rome this week rejected the idea that Bishop Casey would not be allowed to return to Ireland as a further "punishment". The Congregation of Bishops does not see Bishop Casey's current sojourn in Ecuador as some kind of sentence, with a fixed time limit, but rather sees it as a more flexible arrangement.
The body, however, will want to be fully informed about what one Curia figure this week called "Eamonn Casey's attitude". The Vatican will give the go-ahead to Dr Casey's return only if it is certain he is returning as a "retired" priest, someone whose profile in church and/or public life was not so much low as invisible. Given Dr Casey's instinctive loquaciousness and his previous high profile in Irish public life, the Congregation of Bishops may need reassuring that Dr Casey really is a weary and enfeebled man keen to return home.
From the Rome viewpoint, the opinions of the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, and of the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Sean Brady, are crucial to Dr Casey's returning. If they agree to his return, and if the conditions concerning a low-profile existence are met, then the Congregation of Bishops is unlikely to object.
There is at least one recent precedent in Dr Casey's favour. The former Bishop of Basel, Switzerland, Dr Hansjoerg Vogel, who resigned as bishop in 1995 following the announcement that he had a long-term relationship with a woman who was expecting his child, is today living (but not serving as a priest) in his former diocese.