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Fr Oliver Brennan will never forget the morning of August 14, 2010. It was to the beginning of a personal hell that saw him uprooted from the parish community he loved and feeling alienated and unable to exercise his priestly ministry. After decades in the priesthood he now stood accused of abuse.
It is a harrowing chapter in his life that he can only now begin to try and move on from having being told at the weekend that he has been cleared by a Church inquiry – almost a year after being cleared by the civil authorities.
“It was a Saturday morning,” he recalled speaking to The Irish Catholic this week. Fr Brennan, the long-time parish priest of Blackrock and Haggardstown, received a phone call from Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh Dr Gerard Clifford. A short time later Bishop Clifford met with Fr Brennan and told him that an allegation of abuse dating back over 30 years had been received. “It was the last thing on Earth I imagined I would ever hear,” he recalls.
Church procedures – which have been criticised as too draconian by human rights professionals as well as priests’ representatives – immediately swung into place. Fr Brennan was immediately forced to step aside from his ministry. Senior Churchmen are always at pains to point out that the stepping aside is entirely voluntary.
In reality, however, priests faced with allegations of abuse – regardless of the credibility of such allegations – have little choice but to step aside, and move away from their parochial house and the life they have known.
Fr Brennan admits to feeling a “great deal of relief” that he has finally been cleared of any wrongdoing. It has been a long two years since the allegation surfaced just as he was due to be moved to the parish of Keady in Co. Armagh. Continue reading
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