Well-wishers flock to Fr Brian D’Arcy’s mass. (Main Forum)

by desi , Australia, Tuesday, May 01, 2012, 06:18 (383 days ago) @ desi

HUNDREDS of people travelled from all over Ireland yesterday to show their support for Father Brian D'Arcy as the cleric admitted to initially thinking he would have to leave the priesthood.

More than 1,000 people attended midday Mass at the Passionist Monastery near Enniskillen and heard the priest apologise to them for the furore over the Vatican move to censor his views.

Fr D'Arcy got a standing ovation from the congregation in St Gabriel's Chapel as he managed to make light of the controversy.

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Afterwards in the monastery he shares with four other Passionist clerics, the priest himself admitted that he thought his vocation was over when he was first told of the Vatican's move to silence him.

"I was contacted by the head of my order in Rome and he had been called in by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and told that I had been involved in scandals in my writings for the 'Sunday World,'" he told the Irish Independent.

"I was very hurt by it for it was a pretty brutal way of dealing with someone and at that moment I thought I'd have to leave the church; that this was the end of my time as a priest."

He said he told both the BBC and the Sunday newspaper about getting the edict from Rome 14 months ago but had never submitted any material to the CDF since.

"I think that this is really about any criticisms I may have made clear about how the church has handled the issue of clerical sexual abuse and how some of the blame for that lies with Rome.

"I will not stop addressing this issue, however. As someone who was abused, it would be wrong for me as person and as a priest to stay silent,'' he said.

"Silence on child abuse leads to more child abuse and I will not be a part of that," he added.

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If this is true it will backfire on them (again).

But yesterday after the Mass in Enniskillen, one close friend remarked: "Tell your readers in the Irish Independent to ask 'who leaked this story to the Catholic Church-run newspaper 'The Tablet?'.

"Brian said nothing about this for 14 months yet it was the church which leaked this to their own media. It was they who put this in the spotlight, not Fr Brian."

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/wellwishers-flock-to-dr-brian-darcys-mass-as-he...