Priest gratified by the extent of public support

Interview:Fr Gerard McGinnity was candid yesterday about what he has suffered this past 20 years.

Overwhelmed by the response following his interview on The Pat Kenny Show and positive comments about him on Liveline, he felt gratified by the extent of public support and sympathy he was receiving.

If anything, this seemed to free him more when discussing the humiliation and devastation to his standing among colleagues and to his own self-esteem, suffered since his peremptory removal in 1984 from one of the church's most senior positions in Ireland.

He had been senior dean at St Patrick's College Maynooth, often a stepping stone to higher things. One predecessor was Bishop Michael Harty of Killaloe.

Fr McGinnity said "being dismissed for doing one's duty and at the same time being deprived of one's reputation has left wounds within me which may never be healed."

Asked how the 17 bishop/trustees at Maynooth might now make recompense, he said "mere apologies are empty and are effectively meaningless. It is within their power to see to it that this [ injustice] is undone."

In 1984, Fr McGinnity contacted the college bishop/trustees to express concern about the then vice-president of the college, Mgr Micheál Ledwith. He did so following representations to him by six senior seminarians.

The six men had also become concerned about their own future as priests as, having reported their anxiety already to their own individual bishops, there had been no action. They sought Fr McGinnity's protection, as well as his help, in alerting the bishops to their concerns about Mgr Ledwith.

Fr McGinnity was persuaded by the bishops to take a sabbatical year and was told later he would not be returning to Maynooth. He was posted as curate to a rural parish in the Armagh diocese before being appointed dean of discipline at St Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh, where he was for 10 years. He is currently parish priest in Knockbridge, Co Louth.

In 1985 Mgr Ledwith became president of Maynooth, a position he held until June 1995.

In 2002 the college bishop/trustees confirmed his departure followed an allegation of sexual abuse against a minor. There was a subsequent allegation in 2000.

Both allegations were strenuously denied by Mgr Ledwith, who was laicised by the church last month.