With the exception of Gay Byrne, it’s hard to think of a figure more present on the Irish airwaves through the 1980s and early 1990s than bishop Eamonn Casey. The chummy, irreverent face of Ireland’s cold, cruel strain of Catholicism, he was everywhere. Until suddenly, he wasn’t.
The reason he disappeared was, of course, the scandal over his relationship with Annie Murphy. It is difficult to overstate the damage caused by the revelations of an affair in the early 1970s with an American divorcee 20 years his junior – and of the child he had shunned. A hypocrite in a mitre, he made the whole country feel as if they had been treated like fools by the Catholic Church. We’d always known the hierarchy was taking us for mugs. Casey shoved it in our faces.
But in addition to being a liar – was he also a monster? That is the picture painted of the former Bishop of Galway (who passed away in 2017) in Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets – a wrenching documentary (Monday, RTÉ1, 9.35pm), which reveals the church received four separate complaints of childhood sexual abuse against Casey along with what is described as a “child safeguarding concerns”.
There is powerful testimony from Casey’s niece, Patricia Donovan, who describes being abused by Casey from the age of five. “He had no fear of being caught. He thought he could do what he liked, when he liked, how he liked,” she says. “He was almost, like, incensed that I would dare fight against him, that I would dare try to hurt him, I would dare try to stop him. It didn’t make any difference. I feel so absolutely and completely and utterly betrayed by the church I was brought up in.”
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The claims against Casey were “entirely credible”, says Ian Elliott, former chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Irish Catholic Church. “The fact of the matter is that individuals have come forward and spoken about ... numerous sexual activities, some consensual, others not ... It should have been stopped.”
Such were the concerns about Casey that, in 2007, the church essentially stood him down and forbade its former rock-star bishop from saying mass (“removed from public ministry” in Vatican terminology). He appears to have ignored those restrictions and presided over a number of ceremonies, including the funeral of his sister.
With a running time of more than 90 minutes, the documentary by Anne Sheridan traces the span of Casey’s life in the church, from his early days in Limerick to his time in London, when he helped set up housing charity Shelter.
Later, we see him exchanging backslaps with Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show and serving as hype-man for John Paul II during the 1979 papal visit to Ireland. Occasionally, the sheer accumulation of detail is overwhelming, and the film might have benefited from being split into a number of episodes. It also uses the rhetorical device of repeating information already provided – presumably to keep viewers up to speed but which makes the story unnecessarily confusing.
[ Bishop Eamonn Casey accused of sexually abusing three women as childrenOpens in new window ]
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The worst thing is that none of the allegations are a surprise – and nor is the seeming reluctance of the church to do anything about them. When The Irish Times broke the story of Casey’s relationship with Annie Murphy in 1992, the reaction was genuine shock. People can remember where they were when they heard the news. But 32 years later, the sheer accumulation of clerical abuse scandals – to say nothing of the wickedness of the mother and baby homes – has robbed Irish people of their innocence regarding the church and its crimes.
RTÉ has caught a lot of flak since Tubridy-gate but Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets is important public service broadcasting. As it concludes with his funeral in 2017 and his burial in the crypt at Galway Cathedral, it is hard not to think of the death of Jimmy Savile – another public figure accorded full honours on his passing. Public opinion of Savile shifted quickly after the truth about his crimes became known. This searing documentary may have the same effect and forever cast Eamonn Casey in a damning light.
