SIX months later, he is still the local hero. The latest story about Father Michael Kennedy, curate of Dungarvan, Co Waterford, is that he saved a woman's life recently. Apparently, he made a late night house call to an elderly woman. There was no reply at the door and he called the gardai. They broke in and found her collapsed on the floor with hypothermia.
It did not make the papers but most people in town have heard about it. The gardai in Dungarvan have no record of it, but that does not mean it did not happen, they say.
Father Kennedy became famous for another story six months ago. Evidence to prove this one has proved impossible to find, despite a week of intense media interest and what the curate's housekeeper describes as umpteen attempts to follow it up.
The charismatic priest brought an urban myth to a rural town in what he said was an attempt to warn parents about the danger of AIDS. Last September, he told his congregation in the Waterford town that five men in the area were HIV positive. The source, he said, was a woman who lived in the town for eight months, and had returned to London to die.
Father Kennedy's congregation included the local Cork Examiner journalist, John Murphy. His report of the sermon appeared on the front page the following Monday, unleashing national and international interest in what was to have been a message for a small congregation.
The woman had gone on a campaign of vengeance fuel led by her hatred of men, he said. And she notched up around 80 sexual partners in the Munster area.
Now some local people are sceptical that the woman, dubbed the Angel of Death by the tabloids, ever existed. Dr Mary Christie, medical officer with the South Eastern Health Board, says the board has not recorded any increase in men being treated for the AIDS virus.
Attendance at the various sexually transmitted disease clinics in the area actually fell off after the Dungarvan incident, she says. People were probably reluctant to go after the attention given to the AIDS story.
During the media frenzy that followed Father Kennedy's sermon, delivered at two masses, two women were named by anonymous locals as the possible carrier.
One of them still lives in Dungarvan. She fits one of the descriptions of the woman given by Father Kennedy, "petite dark skinned, with a hint of red colouring in her auburn hair." All except the age. Father Kennedy said the woman was in her 20s. This woman's teenage son opens the door at the rented flat just outside the town. She says she has never met the curate. And she does not believe that the woman existed.
Since the "AIDS Avenger" story she has had a mixed reaction from the town that pointed an accusing finger at her. For the first two weeks she didn't go out. When she did emerge a pub landlady welcomed her back. Some people sympathised and apologised for the gossip that led journalists to her door six months ago.
Others have been less sympathetic. The landlord in another pub barred her. Another man started shouting at her, "because I wouldn't let him buy me a drink." His friend told him to break the glass she had been drinking from.
Dungarvan is still angry about the story. The anger is directed not at the source, but at the messengers. The flippant remark six months ago that their town was the "MDS capital of Ireland" still raises hackles.
It is a busy town, trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination, and the last thing it wanted to be famous for was an avenging AIDS carrier.
Mr Sean Murphy has been a social welfare inspector in the town for 26 years. "You could nearly feel the town breathing a sigh of relief when the media left," he says. "Everybody waited to see what was the evidence," then the story just died.
"I'm sceptical about the existence of the `Angel of Death'," Mr Murphy says. "That's not to say that Father Kennedy didn't have a legitimate moral tale to tell ... It was a morality tale and the tale was that illicit sex was dangerous."
The priest refuses to talk to the press. The doorbell at his house has been reconnected since September. But it is not answered. His housekeeper says the mention of journalists just raises his anger". The following morning he refuses even to say "good morning" on his way to say 10 a.m. Mass.
The story does not seem to have affected sales of newspapers in the town. One newsagent says tabloids are still more popular, especially the British tabloids. They're cheaper.
Mr Murphy remembers another story which did the rounds in the town. This involved a woman who went on holiday to Spain. She ate some lettuce and when she came back her stomach started to swell. A few months later she gave birth to a lizard. "That was a very real story and everybody knew a sister of hers who lived close to a cousin of theirs."
Father Kennedy, a champion hurler, is now chairman of the Dungarvan GAA club. "He is well liked, not in a craw thumping way, but because he's an amiable, affable fellow," Mr Murphy says.
Recently the curate, a former Sinn Fein councillor, gave another stirring sermon against the IRA. "He told the men of violence they didn't have any place in his congregation," Mr Murphy says. "He's more forceful in his message and he's prepared to stand up and say things."
The weekend Father Kennedy stood up and told his congregation about MDS, the subject was being discussed at a higher level in the Catholic Church. At the UN women's conference in China the Vatican indicated that it was likely to support the concept of women's sexual rights and the use of condoms for protection against disease.
The document included a paragraph on the responsibility of men in relation to women's health. Relevant bodies would "design specific programmes for men of all ages and male adolescents aimed at providing complete and accurate information on safe and responsible sexual and reproductive behaviour, including voluntary appropriate effective male methods for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases through, inter alia, abstinence and condom use."
Father Kennedy's sermon fleshed out the health warning with characters and a script. He spoke out, he said, because he had been approached by the mother of "victim", who did not want other parents to suffer.
But the parable from the pulpit to an unquestioning congregation mushroomed into an overnight sensation, staggered on for a week and then fell off the front pages. "It has dropped like a stone. No one talks about it any more", says one local.
Despite the scepticism, Father Kennedy's motives are not questioned. "Put it like this: it was a good sermon. After that I don't know", another man said. "So far, the story is the only thing that has died here."
