VATICAN SOURCES said yesterday they expected a coadjutor bishop to be appointed to the archdiocese of Armagh before the end of the year to aid embattled Cardinal Seán Brady.
The coadjutor bishop is usually younger than the resident bishop, essentially entrusted with wide-ranging administrative functions. Under canon law, a coadjutor has the right to succeed the person he is sent to assist.
Cardinal Brady has faced calls to resign this week after a victim of serial child sex abuser Fr Brendan Smyth claimed that information he gave to a Catholic Church inquiry team in 1975, which included Cardinal Brady, was not passed on to parents of some victims. Brendan Boland, who was abused as a child by Smyth, made the allegations in a BBC documentary.
It also emerged yesterday that Brendan Smyth, who had his faculties to say Mass publicly and hear confession in Kilmore diocese removed following the 1975 abuse inquiry by then Fr Seán Brady and others, had those faculties restored to him by then bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan some time afterwards.
This was confirmed yesterday by the Abbot of the Norbertine congregation’s Kilnacrott Abbey in Co Cavan where Smyth had been resident and to which congregation he belonged.
Fr Gerard Cusack was unable to say when those faculties were restored to Smyth by bishop McKiernan. Speaking on radio station Shannonside Northern Sound, he said Smyth’s faculties “were removed for some time and again were restored” by bishop McKiernan following Fr Brady’s 1975 abuse report. Kilmore diocesan secretary Fr Francis Duffy said last night that the current Bishop of Kilmore, Leo O’Reilly, was checking the facts.
The Holy See has stoutly defended the Irish primate, arguing he has done nothing wrong. However Vatican sources now expect Cardinal Brady (73) to effectively step aside, leaving the running of the archdiocese to a younger man.