Truly Frank by Frank McDonald

Author:Frank McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241977651
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

7

Early in 1992, an American called Arthur Pennell contacted the Irish Times. He was making an explosive claim: his partner, Annie Murphy, had previously been in a relationship with the Bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey, and had borne him a son. For a number of months, the story was known to very few members of the staff. Apart from Conor Brady himself, they included Conor O’Clery, then based in New York, who had interviewed Murphy and Pennell at length on several occasions; religious affairs correspondent Andy Pollak; and news editor John Armstrong, who was coordinating their work on it. Major McDowell was undoubtedly kept informed as well. At some point, I happened to meet Andy at Connolly Station, as I got off a train from Belfast that he was waiting to get on. Remarking that I hadn’t seen him for a while, I asked if he was working on anything special.

‘It’s all hush-hush,’ he said. I was intrigued and pressed him further. ‘Well … it’s about a bishop who had a baby,’ he replied.

‘Wow! It must be either Casey or [Brendan] Comiskey,’ I said. But he wouldn’t confirm that it was the Bishop of Galway rather than the Bishop of Ferns.

Once the Irish Times, working from interviews and also from documentary evidence, was finally ready to publish the story in May 1992, it felt the need to put in place a strategy to avoid any accusation that the historically Protestant newspaper was having a go at the Catholic Church. The reporting focused on how Casey had dipped into diocesan funds to pay for his son Peter’s upkeep and education in the US. On RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Andy Pollak had to stick to the line that the Irish Times had no interest in Bishop Casey’s private life, merely in his stewardship of diocesan funds. Yet the two things were inextricably intertwined. There is no more uncomfortable place than a radio studio in such a scenario; Brady, as author of this defensive strategy, should have been the one in the hot seat, rather than Pollak. Even before the story was published, Casey – who knew it was coming – had tendered his resignation and was already en route to Latin America, where he spent several years working with missionaries in rural Ecuador.

Douglas Gageby once told me that he eschewed hobnobbing with the great and good, in case their activities might need to be covered by the Irish Times. In fact, he was a founder member of Murphy’s, a discreet dining and discussion group that included Garret FitzGerald, Tony O’Reilly and TK Whitaker. For Conor Brady, it was the informal ‘First Tuesday Club’, which used to convene in the Grey Door restaurant once a month, and others included the likes of Michael Colgan, then director of the Gate Theatre; Paul McGuinness, worldly-wise manager of U2; and Laura Magahy, who had worked her way up from chief executive of the Irish Film Centre to managing director of Temple Bar Properties at the age of thirty.

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