BISHOP Brendan Comiskey has dismissed as untrue a newspaper report that he will resign as Bishop of Ferns this year.
The report in the Sunday Independent said that although Bishop Comiskey will return to Ireland, "his medical advisers have urged him to relinquish the stressful life of a diocesan bishop on health grounds" and he is expected to step down as Bishop of Ferns in the New Year".
In a phone call to RTE on Sunday evening, Dr Comiskey, who has been spending Christmas in New York with friends on a break from a US alcoholism treatment clinic, called this report "farcical". He said it was "completely untrue" and misleading and no church or medical person had ever suggested that he should step down.
"I haven't the slightest intention or resigning or retiring," the 60 year old prelate insisted.
Sources in Rome said yesterday that as far as they knew Bishop Comiskey had not visited Rome in the past four months. No bishop could ever contemplate the huge step of resigning from his position without consulting first with the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.
Bishop Comiskey also denied an earlier Sunday Independent report that he had been receiving treatment for alcoholism in the Hazeldene treatment centre in Florida. He told RTE he was neither at Hazeldene nor any other alcoholism treatment centre in Florida.
Dr Comiskey said he would sue those who published suggestions that he had failed to remove a parish priest after being told by the local health board that he had been abusing children. This was a reference to the allegations against the former parish priest of Monageer, Co Wexford, now dead, which were found to be valid by the South Eastern Health Board, whose report was passed to Bishop Comiskey.
Bishop Comiskey told RTE on Sunday that the Wexford gardai had gone on the record as saying "they could not find cause against the particular priest".
He also said he would answer questions about diocesan financial matters on his return to Ireland before the end of this month. His original intention to return before Christmas had been changed on medical advice, he said.
Speaking confidently, even bullishly, Dr Comiskey said he did not regret his failure to tell people that he was going to the US for treatment for alcoholism last September. Such an idea was "the thinking of some genius" in Ireland, he said. He was not aware of any Irish public figure ever announcing publicly that they were going for alcoholism treatment.
He noted that "the denial factor" was very strong among alcoholics. If he had denied having been treated for alcoholism on his return to Ireland, "that would be something".
Meanwhile in a letter to his diocese dated January 1st, Dr Comiskey said he looked forward "to being among you once again before the end of the month". His press officer, Father Walter Forde, said the bishop's secretary, Father Thomas Brennan, had spent two weeks in the US last month visiting him every day, and had found him "in remarkably good form and looking very well despite the demands of a difficult treatment programme".
Father Forde said the bishop had received 580 Irish newspaper cuttings on his departure and the allegations following it, and would be every fully briefed" to answer all questions on his return.