KOCHI: Over the last 2000 years of the Christian Church history, there are many instances of clergymen becoming susceptible to the lust and lechery. Former British diplomat Matthew Parris, chronicles such events in his book, ‘The Great Unfrocked: 2000 Years of Church Scandal’. However, the Church weathered it all.
Of those members of the clergy who were keener on earthly pleasures than heavenly worship, the most prominent one could be
Giacinto Achilli
, a 19th century friar who left Italy for Britain after being stripped of his holy office.
Cardinal Newman, a contemporary of Achilli had accused him of rape and seduction of a string of women across Europe, sometimes as young as 15, resulting in a libel suit. Some of the survivors s travelled to the UK from all over the Europe to testify against the priest. During the trial, it emerged that Achilli’s sexual conquests continued even after reaching Britain.
At the end of the trial, Newman was let off with a fine and Achilli emigrated to the US, where he was eventually charged with adultery. He later committed suicide.
The Irish Catholic establishment was under serious convulsion when
Bishop
Eamonn Casey, the protagonist of the book ‘Forbidden fruit: The true story of my love for the bishop of Galway’, fled to Vatican in 1992 to tender his resignation. The book was written by his secret paramour for two decades, Annie Murphy, also the mother of his illegal son. After the resignation, he fled to New York. He was demoted to a priest and sent for missionary work. Casey later returned to Britain and served as a parish priest in
West Sussex
till his retirement. He died last year.
In 1996, the media had reported the disappearance of Roderick Wright, the 56-yearold Catholic Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in Scotland, along with Kathleen MacPhee, a 44-year-old married auxiliary nurse. MacPhee confessed to the head of the
Catholic Church
in Scotland, “I am physically and spiritually unable to sustain the responsibilities of a diocesan bishop. I ask your forgiveness”. Sadly, things didn’t come to a full stop there. As the news broke out, several hundred miles away, a 48-year-old Joanna Whibley voluntarily appeared before BBC’s camera and revealed that she was the mother of a 15-year-old boy, son of Bishop Wright. The Daily Mail, gave the page-one headline: ‘Just How Many More, Bishop?
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