THE POPE reaffirmed his commitment to priestly celibacy last night as the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland reeled from the news that Bishop Roderick Wright is the father of a 15-year-old son.
The church authorities were only made aware of this last Sunday night. A statement last night confirmed this was central to his decision to resign, in addition to his current relationship with a divorced mother of three, Ms Kathleen MacPhee. "This was, in fact, one of the main reasons given for his resignation and was communicated to the Vatican with his resignation. It was not for the church authorities to make such confidential information public," it said.
On Tuesday, Cardinal Thomas Winning of Glasgow suggested Dr Wright could remain a priest if he gave up any sexual relationship he might have had.
The BBC broke the dramatic news - with its echoes of the Bishop Casey-Annie Murphy affair - in an interview with a distraught Ms Joanna Whibley, mother of Kevin, who was born in 1981.
Ms Whibley said she felt forced to go public after hearing Dr Wright's resignation statement. In it, the former Bishop of Argyll and the Isles apologised to his own family and that of Ms Macphee, but made no reference to Kevin or his mother.
Fighting back tears, Ms Whibley said: "I made up my mind that I must unburden myself, and put an end to Kevin's feeling that he shouldn't even exist. She went on: "Although Kevin knows it's his dad, and Roddy know he's his dad, he has been an absent father. Kevin still needs the fact to be known that that's his dad."
Kevin said: "I feel angry at the loss of a father. But it's too late now."
Kevin was born nine years before his father was appointed bishop. He said: "I haven't seen him for more than two months put together in my whole life."
A spokesman for the church of Scotland, Father Tom Connelly, said he was devastated. "This clearly does an enormous amount of damage - damage to the credibility of the church, to the credibility of individual priests going about their legitimate business and trying to conduct their pastoral affairs."
Dr William Oddie, a former Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, said: "This is something that reflects on the man rather than on the church and its rules of celibacy." He said the anti-celibacy lobby would take this as a great occasion to raise the issue.
Speaking in France, the Pope told an audience of priests and nuns: "The demands of your vows may appear to your contemporaries difficult to understand, and almost impossible to live up to. Do not let this upset you. To tell the truth, faithful and humble as you are, you give a witness sorely needed."