A second priest, in as many weeks, has written an open letter criticising the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin for its treatment of former diocesan secretary Mary Sheehy.
She was made redundant after 28 years service in July 2003, which she challenged in the High Court. In February 2004 it found the diocese was within its rights in making her redundant. The decision is under appeal to the Supreme Court. The position of diocesan secretary is one of the most significant in any diocese and is usually held by a priest, as is now the case in Kildare and Leighlin.
Fr Dermot Mansfield, spiritual father to the Irish province of the Jesuit congregation, has said of Ms Sheehy's redundancy: "I have not come across a more unjust case, or one requiring more urgent redress."
The priest said he had known Ms Sheehy since she attended the Jesuit retreat centre at Dollymount in Dublin in 2003, and that he had attended High Court hearings in the case. In an open letter in the news pages of the current Carlow Nationalist, he asks: "What kind of mentality has allowed certain church authorities to behave against her so unjustly?"
Ms Sheehy had been "successfully isolated, outmanoeuvred, thrown aside", and "as a priest I am ashamed of what has been done to Mary".
In another open letter, in last week's Carlow Nationalist, Canon Séamus Cunnane, a native of the diocese but retired at Cardigan in Wales, warned Kildare and Leighlin that "to use the law of the land to evade a clear moral duty is, I believe, a grave sin." Describing himself as a friend of Bishop Patrick Lennon, who hired Ms Sheehy in 1974, he said the main issue in the case was "moral, not legal".
What had happened Ms Sheehy was "in clear contravention of what the church's social doctrine teaches".