Fr Dermod McCarthy, the former editor of religious programmes at RTÉ who played a role in trying to secure Ben Dunne’s release from IRA kidnappers, has died aged 83.
A popular figure with a wide circle of friends, Fr McCarthy had also been unofficial chaplain at RTÉ for decades.
Before RTÉ, he was part of the distinguished team which produced the ground-breaking Radharc series of religious-themed programmes for the station, from 1965.
It involved more than 400 programmes filmed across 75 countries which included the first televised famine in Nigeria, where the Biafran people were starving to death in the late 1960s; smuggling film out of Brazil; the last interview with St Oscar Romero before he was assassinated in March 1980; and flying through anti-aircraft fire over Africa.
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It 1981 Fr McCarthy was arrested after trying to broker the late Ben Dunne’s release after he had been kidnapped by an IRA gang. The priest had officiated at Ben Dunne’s marriage to his wife Mary, and made a TV appeal to the IRA kidnappers, urging them to “cut their losses and get out fast”.
It followed an attempt to get a ransom to the kidnappers which was foiled by gardaí.
Following Fr McCarthy’s appeal, the gang released Ben Dunne just after midnight on Sunday, October 18th, 1981.
From 1982 Fr McCarthy served at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, where he was administrator before appointment at RTÉ in 1991. He worked as editor of religious programmes until 2007.
Originally from Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, where his mother was librarian, he attended secondary school at Mount St Joseph near Roscrea in Co Tipperary before beginning studies for the priesthood prior to ordination in 1966. He had been ill for some time.
