Galway Advertiser 1992/1992_10_22/GA_22101992_E1_023.pdf 

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G A S GUIDE T OG O I N G S O N A N DG O I N G O U T

ENTERTAINMENT

Sales of the Sunday Tribune rocketed last weekend with the publication of extracts from "Fall From Grace - The Life of Eamon Casey", the first in-depth account of the events surrounding the Galway bishop's resignation earlier this Summer. Jeff O'Connell talked recently to author Joe Broderick about his new book and asked him "how could it have happened?".
FEW PEOPLE IN IRELAND - and especially in Galway - are ever likely to forget May 7th of this year. Unless you were listening to the radio in the early hours of that Thursday morning, the first indication you had that something was up came on Morning Ireland when the startling news was broadcast that Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway, had resigned his position for "personal reasons" and had, it was believed, left Ireland for the United States. By the time The Gay Byrne Show came on the air, rumours had started to spread that the innocent ly neutral phrase "personal reasons" concealed a bombshell that fully justified dragging Conor Cruise O'Brien's famous description " G U B U " out of journalistic top-drawer. The nation listened with growing astonishment as it learned Bishop Casey had paid a woman liv ing in the United States sums of money over a period of years. There was talk of an intimate rela tionship and even a child.

TEBH P AD H B GAHR H I O N I I RP E S S O
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hen, on Friday morning, radio listeners heard the woman herself, Ms. Annie Murphy, describe in detail how she had fallen in love with Eamonn Casey when he was Bishop of Kerry and how Ms. Murphy had given birth to a child, Peter, in a Dublin hospital eighteen years ago. For Galway people, who had come to know the Bishop over the years as a warm, dynamic, plainspeaking individual, identified with a whole range of issues and organisations, from his principled stand during the 1984 visit of President Reagan to the high-profile he had through his chairmanship of Trocaire, the news came as an incredible shock. It seemed unbelieveable that this man could have led a double life for eighteen years, baptising and CONTINUED ON PAGE 31