West Cork priest bids emotional farewell online as he battles terminal cancer

A West Cork priest who has spoken out in support of the victims of clerical child sex abuse has issued an emotional farewell online to his parishioners as he confirmed his retirement due to terminal cancer.

Fr Ger Galvin, who is in his mid-60s, posted the emotional farewell on the Muintir Bháire Community Council Facebook page, confirming his retirement from the parish, which spans the Sheep's Head peninsula and includes the villages of Durrus, Ahakista and Kilcrohane.

“This is Fr Ger, as you know, making a recording which I would rather not do but I really have no choice,” said Fr Galvin as he confirmed that had cancer in both his bones and his lungs and it was now incurable so he wished to bid farewell and thanked all the people of the parish.

“This is a very difficult time in my life, my shoulder is very sore, my lungs are very sore, sleeping is very difficult … I wish it wasn’t like this – I wish I could shake your hands and say ‘Goodbye’ but I can’t. I don’t have the energy anymore,” he added in the online message posted on Sunday.

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Fr Galvin, a native of Timoleague who has been parish priest of Muintir Bháire since 2009, fought back tears as he thanked the people of the sprawling peninsular parish for their support, both spiritual and financial over the years and more recently since they learned of his cancer.

“Over the years I have been in Muintir Bháire, many things have happened that I have enjoyed … I had the joy of First Communions, Confirmations, weddings, baptism – I had the sorrow of funerals and the heartbreak of people’s deaths and trying to do my best for people in sorrow, people in need.

“I have great laughs, we had coffee mornings together – we as a community learned an awful lot together. I learned about the children who were in the school, who at the time could be very funny and were great craic and their endless ability to surprise me is a wonderful thing,” he said.

“Nobody is perfect and gets it right all the time and that certainly is the case with me and I certainly made my fair share of mistakes and blunders. But I have never set out to deliberately hurt anyone, to offend anybody or to upset them but I know I have, by my words, deeds and lack of same.

“And therefore I now want to apologise to those people whom I upset or disappointed or hurt or let down in any way. I hope that someday you can forgive me for my failures and for any hurt that I may have caused you.”

“I have cancer in my bones and in my lungs and it is incurable, I know that too, but your prayers and your power of care for me has helped me to be healed – what that actually means in real terms for me is that cancer will not be my life – cancer is not my life.

Hope and love

“I have also spoken to you about healing and curing and because of your prayers and your love, I am healed and that means the taking away of fear, anger, resentment, self-pity, pain and much more – they are gone and they are replaced with hope and with love,” he said.

Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr Fintan Galvin officially announced Fr Galvin's retirement last week as part of a series of diocesan changes, with Canon Martin O'Driscoll, parish priest of Bantry, announced as the administrator of Muintir Bháire as part of the new parish structure in the Bantry area.

Fr Galvin made headlines back in 2005 when he championed the rights of clerical sex abuse victims, refusing to read out a letter at Mass from the then Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr John Buckley in the wake of the Ferns Report into Clerical Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church.

Fr Galvin said at the time that he did not question the bishop’s sincerity but said the letter was “mistimed” and Dr Buckley should have waited until a more appropriate date in the future when positive work in relation to clerical sex abuse had been carried out.

"I just felt the letter was incomplete. It didn't go far enough. There was no real sense of atonement," he said. There are a couple of statements in there that I was disturbed by. There is no admission in the first place as to who broke the trust," said Fr Galvin, then a curate in Clonakilty.

“It is more PR than reality. I just feel that action should have come first and the letter should have come at a later date when something positive had been done,” said Fr Galvin who took issue with Bishop Buckley saying “the Church’s system in the past did not deal effectively with the problems”.

“Who are the church systems? I would have been happier if the bishop had said the church leadership. I still have depths of pessimism about the whole thing,” said Fr Galvin who received a round of applause from the congregation for his comments.

More recently, Fr Galvin again challenged the church authorities in 2017 in the wake of the Tuam Mother and Babies Home scandal, castigating those in leadership for failing to safeguard the innocent and the fact that an estimated 796 babies' bodies were dumped in the sewerage system.

Revealing that he was sickened by what he read in the Tuam Report, Fr Galvin said: “When I was ordained, I assumed that I was becoming a priest in an institution that would be guided always by the words and the life of Jesus, but I have since discovered that that was a rose-tinted illusion.”