BISHOP Brendan Comiskey is due to leave the US this weekend on the first leg of his trip back to Ireland. It is thought that he will be staying with friends in England for a short time.
It is understood that he will appear publicly for the first time in his Ferns diocese to say Mass.
Dr Comiskey has been away for nearly five months. He left Ireland without warning in the third week of September because he was "physically and emotionally exhausted", in the words of his press officer, Father Walter Forde. It was said at first that he was taking three months sabbatical leave in the US and would be back on Christmas Eve.
The following week Father Forde admitted in a television interview that Dr Comiskey had an alcohol problem and had gone to the US for treatment.
His departure led to newspaper allegations about the bishop's drinking and failure to deal with priests in his diocese who were allegedly sex abusers.
The Sunday Independent claims he had refused three separate Garda requests to answer questions during an inquiry into one such priest; that five separate eases of alleged sex abuse - four involving priests - were brought to his attention; and that he had been detained at Bangkok airport in Thailand drunk and without identification.
It was announced in early December that because his course of treatment would not finish until the end of that month he would not be coming back to Ireland until mid or late January.
On New Year's Eve he telephoned RTE from New York and angrily denied a Sunday Independent report that he would resign as Bishop of Ferns this year on medical advice. He called the report "farcical" and "completely untrue". In a diocesan letter on January 1st he said he looked forward "to being among you once again before the end of the month".
was the last weekend January, but this passed. Some church sources believed the Hierarchy had asked him to postpone his return so that it would not clash with the publication of the bishops report on clerical child sexual abuse.