BISHOP'S RESPONSE:BISHOP OF Galway Martin Drennan has said he doesn't feel disturbed by being mentioned in the Dublin diocesan report.
Speaking in Maynooth yesterday, he said: “The report says nothing negative about me in fact, you know. I don’t think I have any questions to answer, in fact, from my own reflections on the time there .”
Asked whether there might be a danger of contamination by association, having been mentioned in the report, he responded: “The association thing is coming into it but I don’t feel affected by it. I don’t feel disturbed by it. I feel any questions I can answer easily enough, if any question arises.”
Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey thought it “unfair” of Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny to say all five serving bishops named in the report should resign. “They were not in the same situation,” he said.
They had been asked to respond. “They will do that and I think people should attend very carefully to what they say. Otherwise there’s a danger we’re just looking for bodies, as they did in pagan times, to throw in a river to placate the gods. I think we can do better than that,” he said.
“But I realise what drives that, a sense of a terrible wrong,” he said.
There had to be a response to that wrong but “we must make sure we get it right”.
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who is to travel to the Vatican on Friday with Cardinal Seán Brady, said he had received responses from all but one of those named in the report to whom he had sent letters.
When he had received all he would “have some idea . . . we’ll see what happens in Rome” on Friday.
On the Rome visit, he had “no idea of the structure of the thing”. On possible resignations he said “the person has to take the responsibility – give them time to do that”.
Earlier yesterday in Dublin’s Harold Cross, where he attended with President Mary McAleese the opening of new accommodation at the hospice, he said he got “a few handshakes” from his fellow bishops at the meeting in Maynooth.
On RTÉ’s Prime Time last week he had said that just two bishops had lifted the phone to him following the publication of the report to ask if he was okay.
Yesterday he said he hadn’t meant the comment “in a nasty way”.