BISHOP Brendan Comiskey is expected to return to his Ferns diocese to say Mass in a church in Wexford this weekend or early next week. He is currently in England.
He had been staying with a friend, a fellow priest of the Sacred Heart Congregation, in London following his return from the United States last weekend, but has now moved again.
In a letter received by all priests in the diocese on Tuesday, Dr Comiskey said he would resume his duties as bishop next week.
Dr Comiskey has been to Rome twice in the past month to meet senior officials of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops. At the first meeting in early January he is understood to have received a cool reception. At the second he was interviewed in a friendlier atmosphere and is confident that he is returning to Wexford with the Vatican's blessing.
The chairman of the Ferns Council of Priests, Father Bill Cosgrave, said yesterday it would be "very difficult" for Dr Comiskey to regain the trust of the diocese.
Responding to this week's opinion poll findings in the Wexford People, Father Cosgrave said he had known there was criticism of and anger towards the bishop but the strength of it as revealed in the poll "surprised and shocked me
The poll, carried out among 371 people by Lansdowne Market Research, showed that 47 per cent of people in Ferns want him to resign and only 36 per cent want whim to stay on as their bishop.
More than 70 per cent believe he handled child sex abuse allegations against some of his priests badly and 55 per cent have little or no confidence in him. Only 9 per cent say they have a great deal of confidence in him.
Father Cosgrave said on RTE yesterday that the poll findings would make it more difficult for Dr Comiskey "to come back and resume his ministry in an effective way". He said it was "going to be difficult anyway" and the poll would make it "even more difficult".
He confirmed that a small number of parents did not want Dr Comiskey to confirm their children in the coming weeks and months "that's another expression of their anger at the bishop."
In the letter he sent to priests this week, Dr Comiskey apologised for not telling them he was leaving to be treated for alcoholism in the US, saying that the guilt and shame involved meant he could not bring himself to do it. He also apologised for raising false alarms about the date of his return.
It is nearly five months since the bishop's unannounced departure for the US in mid September.
At first his press officer, Father Walter Forde, said he was taking three months sabbatical leave because he was "physically and emotionally exhausted" after a summer of public controversy over priestly celibacy.
However a fortnight later Father Forde issued a statement saying that Dr Comiskey bad gone to an American clinic for treatment for alcoholism. It was said that the bishop would be back in Ferns in time for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. However in late November Father Forde said that Dr Comiskey had decided so as not to turn the Christian festival into a circus and to allow him to finish his alcoholism course not to return to Ireland until mid January.
On New Year's Eve Bishop Comiskey phoned RTE from New York and angrily denied a Sunday newspaper report that he would resign as Bishop of Ferns this year on medical advice.