Peter Murphy, the son of Annie Murphy and the former bishop of Galway Eamon Casey, has spoken warmly about how he developed a friendship with his father which continued until the bishop began to suffer further effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
On a recent visit to Dublin he said they had met regularly, mostly in Boston.
"Did I form a relationship? Did I get to love the man? Sure. But in the end we were never father and son. We were two people that got to know each other. Him very much in the twilight of his life. Me as a young adult. We became very good friends. That's all I ever wanted from him," he told The Irish Times.
For the past two years Bishop Casey has been in a Co Clare nursing home. Mr Murphy, who is 38 and single, works near Boston selling “high-end electronics.”
He said he felt the way the Catholic Church treated his father “was ridiculous . . . especially with what has come across our eyes in last 20, 17 years – all the paedophile scandals. To tell you the truth, I felt this way from the get-go. What did the guy do? He had an affair.”
Mr Murphy attended the University of Connecticut for three years where he “did more drinking than I did studying”. Bishop Casey got him a hotel job, which led to many years working in restaurants around Boston.
He says he feels no anger at what happened in the past. “I’ve no time for that s***, to be blunt . . . there’s enough stresses in my life. I’ve to pay bills. I’m getting fat. I’ve got to lose weight. You know what I mean. I’m nearly 40.”
Mr Murphy will appear in Print and Be Damned, the first part of a four-part series on TV3 that begins next Thursday.
