BISHOP EAMON Casey is well. “I’m surviving, I’m in good health, as well as you can be at 83,” he said in Dublin last night.
“My memory is gone badly for a long, long time. I got four mini strokes in my brain about eight years ago.” He recalled: “They told me – they were very blunt – they said ‘You’ve had four mini strokes on your brain’. I said ‘What does that mean?’ ‘You’re on your way to Alzheimer’s or a stroke.’ And I said ‘What can I do?’ ‘Very little,’ they said.”
He couldn’t recall whether he received that diagnosis in England or since he arrived back in Ireland in February 2006. He has lived since then in east Galway but has not been allowed say Mass in public. Asked whether he was content, he replied, “I’ve never been discontent in my life and I never will be no matter what impositions are put on me or what I’m not allowed to do. I don’t care. I am alright with God.”
Asked his opinion on the Irish Catholic Church today, he said: “Now I wouldn’t be in a position , and that’s genuine. I no longer have the ability to stand back and judge a situation.”
Bishop Casey was speaking to The Irish Timesat Newman House, at the launch of The Search for Justice: Trócaire, a History, by Brian Maye. He recalled how Trócaire came to be founded 37 years ago: "I worked in England for many, many years helping the Irish to buy their own homes. While I was there, I became a member of the board of a sister organisation in England. As a result, I knew that they were about to open a branch in Ireland. By sheer accident, I was made bishop and I remember distinctly within a week of being made a bishop I went to Armagh and said to the cardinal , this organisation in England is about to open a branch in Ireland. I said 'We should be doing it. We have missionaries all over the world.' And that's how Trócaire was founded."
He recruited the late Brian McKeown, as director and to whom the book is dedicated. Asked who appointed him chairman, Bishop Casey responded “Sure I set the thing up.” The book was launched by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. Among the large attendance were Trócaire’s most recent chairman Bishop John Kirby and director Justin Kilcullen.
Bishop Casey resigned as Bishop of Galway in May 1992 when it emerged he had a 17-year-old son, Peter, with Annie Murphy. Since then he spent five years working on the missions in Ecuador and a further five years in an English parish.
