Pope John Paul did not want Dr Eamonn Casey to resign as Bishop of Galway when he went to Rome to do so in May 1992, Bishop Casey has claimed.
"It was heartbreaking," Dr Casey (79) has said, in an interview to be broadcast this week. "The holy father didn't want to accept it."
In an interview with Tralee historian and broadcaster Maurice O'Keefe, which will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland, Dr Casey says he resigned because he wanted "to get out before the media descended on me".
Conor O'Clery, then North America correspondent for The Irish Times, had put an official request through to the bishop's residence in Galway, asking for a meeting to discuss certain financial payments he had made to Annie Murphy, with whom the bishop had a son 17 years previously.
As the then editor of this newspaper, Conor Brady, recalled in his book Up With The Times: "It turned out that Casey was on holidays in Malta. But a message came back to say that he would meet The Irish Times on his return in two days' time."
The meeting was set for the Skylon Hotel, close to Dublin airport. But Dr Casey did not keep the appointment. The same evening the Vatican announced that he had tendered his resignation to the pope.
He left Ireland on an Aer Lingus flight to New York. A "very good friend" had booked the ticket.
When he arrived in New York a car was waiting. He was taken to a place where he stayed for five days to avoid the media.
After a brief stay in New York during May 1992, following his flight there, he spent six months in a contemplative monastery in the northern US where "I came to terms with myself", he says.
He sought out "God's will for me. I believe in God's forgiveness and healing".
He also replied to the 750 letters he had received at the time.
The radio interview, which was conducted at Dr Casey's home in Shanaglish, Co Galway, last summer, will be broadcast in three eight-minute segments - each approved by Dr Casey - on three consecutive mornings.
In his interview with Mr O'Keefe, Dr Casey recalled how he met Veronica Guerin in the US through a friend, with whom he had agreed to talk to her. He and Ms Guerin spoke for "a few hours every day" over a period until he felt he could trust her.
Then, according to Dr Casey, she told him her boss (then Sunday Tribuneeditor Vincent Browne) was coming over from Ireland to conduct the interview. Dr Casey said he told Ms Guerin that if he did an interview, the only one he would do it with was her. He recalled meeting Mr Browne and telling him he had "total confidence" in Ms Guerin and would do the interview with her or not at all.
He said he found her "a delightful person". They did the interview over four days and she allowed him see the finished articles before publication, except for the final piece. "I didn't edit the fourth piece," he recalled, as he had not time. He was in Ecuador by then. He remembered crying when he heard she had been shot (in June 1996).
He worked as a missionary priest in Ecuador for six-and-a-half years and in 1998 he was accepted for parish work and a hospital chaplaincy in Staplefield, Sussex, in the Arundel and Brighton diocese in England.
Last February he returned to live in Ireland, at Shanaglish near Gort in Co Galway. However, he has been unable to say Mass there pending the outcome of a Church investigation into allegations of child sex abuse made against him by a woman in November 2005.
The 13 allegations concerned incidents that she claimed had taken place in Ireland over 30 years ago. She has made similar unproven claims against others in the past. Following a Garda investigation, the DPP announced last August that no charges were being brought arising from her allegations. At that time it was anticipated the separate internal Church inquiry into the allegations would take a further few weeks.
