The one on the left silly.
ON Monday, November 11, 1940, the day when Fr John Charles McQuaid, the former president of Blackrock College, was informed that Pope Pius XII was appointing him Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, he slipped quietly away from the many visiting dignitaries calling to offer congratulations.
The archbishop-elect drove to Kimmage Manor, a sister house of the Holy Ghost Congregation. Unannounced, he pulled rank on his former superior and took away his own personal file covering his long years studying there for the priesthood.
This was a criminal act of theft. It was Holy Ghost property. It smacked of the action of an unscrupulous control freak. But what dark secrets did McQuaid have to hide that were contained in his file?
This week, McQuaid’s reputation as Dublin’s ‘Great Archbishop’ from 1940 to 1972 has been irretrievably damaged in the light of revelations in the Murphy Commission’s Supplementary Report of at least two separate allegations of child sexual abuse.