Father Sean Fortune had a lucrative second career as the founder and head of a group offering courses in broadcasting, journalism and drama.
In the late 1980s he was sent by Bishop Brendan Comiskey to the English Catholic Church's Hatch End communications training school outside London, which drew on the BBC's expertise and facilities.
When, at the bishop's urging, the four main churches came together in Wexford to form the Christian Media Trust to make religious programmes for South East Radio in 1989, he was one of its first presenters.
In the early 1990s, he set up his own media training body, which he was to give the grandiose title the Institute for Journalism and Theatre. He used the contacts he had built up with the media to persuade an RTE producer and an Irish Independent journalist to give lectures for him.
A prominent Limerick PR practitioner taught public relations, and a number of actors and teachers taught speech and drama. He himself gave courses on radio.
His "institute" never had any permanent premises, it did not publish any accounts and his certificates and diplomas were not recognised by any professional media institution or association.
Most of his courses were held in Dublin, in hired rooms in hotels, at UCD, at the Jesuit college at Milltown Park and in RTE studios. The huge interest in the world of the media ensured that he never lacked applicants for these courses.
In the mid-1990s, before he had to give up such work because of criminal charges of child sex abuse, he was able to run a drama course and a 21-week broadcasting and journalism course every six months.
The latter could attract up to 50 people - and they were lucrative. One person who worked with him calculated that there were some 48 people on one course in 1996, all but a few paying a £1,000 fee.
Overheads were relatively low, perhaps £200 a week for lecturers; £400 for the use of a studio; the same amount for newspaper advertising a couple of times a year; £50 for the hire of a lecture room and small amounts for a temporary typist and a mobile phone.
This person estimated that the priest could have been making £30,000£35,000 from every course.
He also ran shorter two-week and weekend courses for £200 and £100 respectively. As late as two weeks before Christmas 1996, a month after he had appeared in court on 22 sex abuse charges, he turned up to hand out diplomas at an end-of-course party - and he was still talking about running courses in the new year.
At various times in recent years he also ran post-Leaving Certificate communications courses at Palmerstown Community School in west Dublin and at the Garda Training Centre in Templemore, Co Tipperary.