Madam, - I am flattered that Patsy McGarry should consider that the 1987 RTÉ Morning Ireland interview in which I exclusively predicted that Desmond Connell would become the next Archbishop of Dublin "did the trick" (The Irish Times, April 27th).
The truth is not quite so simple. According to my sources in Rome, there were already about six candidates in the running for the Dublin post - double the number on the usual terna sent to the Vatican by the nuncio.
Dr Donal Murray, a Dublin auxiliary, would have been favoured by many Dublin priests, but the view in Rome was that he had permitted "unorthodox practices" in Bray. Those included the use of altar girls, which was not just "uncommon" then, but was specifically forbidden. He also condoned the use of general absolution in a way which remains the exception, rather than the rule.
It may be that Dr Murray was simply a man of vision whose time had not yet come. Certainly, he seems to have been successful and popular as Bishop of Limerick.
But whatever problems Cardinal Connell may have endured over the past 16 years, one can only gasp at the potential consequences had the "hotly tipped" Mgr Micheál Ledwith become Archbishop of Dublin. - Yours, etc.,
KIERON WOOD, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Patsy McGarry writes: The report by Mr Woods to which I referred was broadcast on RTÉ TV news on May 1st, 1987 and concerned the practice of allowing altar girls to serve at Mass in Ballywaltrim parish at Bray, Co Wicklow.