Madonna Byrnes, like Catholics all over Ireland, reveres the Virgin Mary. When she was 22, Byrnes even organised a pilgrimage for local people to visit one of the world’s most celebrated shrines: Lourdes, the small grotto in the French Pyrenees where Mary is said to have appeared to children.
Pilgrims come to Lourdes from around the globe to seek solace, inspiration and miraculous cures for their illnesses and afflictions. For Byrnes, however, Lourdes brought something different — love. But there was a complication; the man she fell for was an elderly Catholic priest. The two met during a fund-raising function for pilgrims, and their friendship eventually became a full-blown romance.
When it was revealed, the relationship between 73-year-old Father Maurice ”Mossy” Dillane and 31-year-old primary-school teacher Byrnes rocked the small village of Killoran in the rural parish of Woodford-Looscaun, Co Galway. The news that Byrnes had had a child by the priest last November added to the impact.
But after the initial shock, the close-knit community united behind the lovers. Newspapers that offered substantial fees for a picture of the couple taken at a parish function two years ago were rebuffed as local people sought to protect their much-loved former curate and ”quiet and cultured” Byrnes, who by then had been his partner of nine years.
At their bungalow on the outskirts of the village, Byrnes’s parents would make no comment. Their daughter has left the parish and is believed to be with Dillane at a relative’s home in Co Limerick.
The way the community has supported the couple has been a sign of a new attitude to personal morality in Ireland; for while its Catholics may still take their religion from Rome, their beliefs about what is right or wrong are more home-grown. On the other hand, rumours that the pair are planning to marry were greeted with approval.
”We wish them luck, they’re two lovely people,” said one woman emerging from the village’s Catholic church on Friday evening.
”It’s bloody unbelievable news, we’re talking about nothing else since,” said one male shopper on Killoran’s main street. ”Nobody had a clue. He was probably one of the most popular priests we’ve ever had here.”
It was only when the pastoral council in Woodford began to hear rumours this month that its chairperson, Justin O’Byrne, contacted the parish priest.
”Last Saturday, he confirmed what we had heard,” said O’Byrne. ”At this point, we’re just pleased that the church are handling this matter appropriately and that all care and understanding is being shown to the woman and baby.”
Dillane met Byrnes during the mid-Nineties when he returned to Ireland after a long stint at a parish in Texas. Her family lived just yards from the parish church in Killoran. When Dillane was moved to a different parish in east Galway 18 months ago, Byrnes changed jobs and followed him.
At the beginning of November, Byrnes took maternity leave from her post at the local school. Staff believed her pregnancy was the result of a casual affair. When she had the baby at the end of the month, the space for the father’s name on the birth certificate was left blank.
Galway is no stranger to clerical scandal. Fourteen years ago, the county was the scene of controversy when the hugely popular Bishop Eamonn Casey was found to have fathered a child with an American divorcee. The ensuing controversy convulsed the church in Ireland and forced Casey to flee the country.
Friends of the former Bishop of Galway contrasted the ”feeding frenzy” that descended on Casey with the relaxed attitude of ”middle Catholic Ireland” to Dillane and Byrnes. On the back of this latest story, Casey’s friends confirmed this weekend that he is planning soon to come home to Ireland.
Pat Buckley is a rebel Catholic priest who has since become a bishop in the pro-Latin Mass church and ministers to those he says the Vatican prefers to forget. They include gay and lesbian Catholics (Buckley is openly gay) and women who have sexual relationships with priests.
From his base in Larne, Co Antrim, Buckley runs ”Bethany”, an island-wide support group for women in love with Catholic priests. The former west Belfast priest has 145 members in Bethany, but his claims about the extent of priests involved in sexual relationships are astonishing.
”I would say with confidence that there are about 1 000 women on the island of Ireland who have had or still have sexual relationships with members of the clergy,” he says. ”These include nuns as well as laity. In fact, when I started out in the priesthood my colleagues used to refer to the nun-priest relationship as ‘the third way’. It was not unusual for a priest and nun to have a physical relationship.
”I’m just one priest helping out nearly 150 women in that situation. It makes sense to say there are many other women out there in similar relationships. It is the big secret that the hierarchy in Ireland and the Vatican want kept in the closet. Because celibacy is killing the church, and they won’t admit it.”
In Galway, a former priest and friend of Dillane said that they had both always believed the celibacy rule was ”rubbish and should be abolished”.
”I don’t know where he is now, but I wish him well,” said Jim Kennedy, who is also in his seventies. ”The birth of a child is always a happy occasion. Good luck to them.” — Guardian Unlimited Â