BISHOP Eamonn Casey has passed away.
The former Bishop of Kerry and Galway, who resigned following bombshell revelations that he had fathered a child, died in a nursing home in Co Clare this afternoon. He had been resident there for a number of years and he had been quite unwell for some time. He was 89.
Ordained to the priesthood in the Diocese of Kerry in 1951, the Firies native was Bishop of Kerry from 1969 to 1976 when he was transferred to Galway.
A gregarious and popular member of the clergy, he was well-known for his work with Irish emigrants in Britain and for his missionary work on behalf of Third World aid agency Trócaire.
While he was Bishop of Kerry, Dr Casey had a brief intimate relationship with American divorcee Annie Murphy, while she stayed with him in Killarney and at his holiday home in Inch, and they had had a son, Peter, who was born in 1974.
When the matter became public in May 1992, Bishop Casey immediately resigned his post and fled to Ecuador where he served with the Missionary Society of St James for 14 years.
He later moved to the UK and, eventually, back to Galway in 2006 where he lived in the rural parish of Shanaglish on the Clare-Galway border. He was not allowed to celebrate Mass in public by the church hierarchy.
When he became unwell, Bishop Casey was admitted to Carrigoran House Nursing Home in Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare where he received excellent care and attention and he passed away peacefully at around 2.00pm today.
Anne Murphy who co-wrote a book about her relationship with the bishop, and their son, Peter, now aged 43, both live in the US.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later and prayers are expected to be offered at all Masses in the Kerry Diocese for Dr Casey who will be remembered as a larger-then-life character, a real man of the people, who was held in very high regard by the people of his native county.
KillarneyToday.com
