Catholic World News News Feature

Former Irish seminary head defrocked October 28, 2005

The former head of Ireland's renowned Maynooth seminary has been defrocked, it is revealed in a government report on sexual abuse in the Ferns diocese, released earlier this week.

Msgr. Micheál Ledwith, who was president of St. Patrick's College in Maynooth and a member of the International Theological Commission, was dismissed from the clerical state in September. The action came on a request from Bishop Eamonn Walsh, the apostolic administrator of the Ferns diocese; his recommendation was approved by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Ferns report details a series of sex-abuse allegations against Msgr. Ledwith, beginning in the 1980s, and notes that several members of the Irish hierarchy failed to act on the complaints. When a dean of the Maynooth seminary, Father Gerard McGinnity, urged attention to the problem, the dean was transferred to other duties, and Msgr. Ledwith remained. The Ferns report notes that removal of Father McGinnity could only be seen as an effort to silence criticism of the seminary's leader.

Msgr. Ledwith was eventually forced out of his role at Maynooth, after a man identified to the media only as "Raymond" brought a sex-abuse lawsuit against him. Ledwith settled the case with Raymond, but resigned his post at Maynooth in 1994.

The former president of the Maynooth seminary-- which is now the only functioning seminary in Ireland-- is now a lecturer affiliated with the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, a New Age institution in the state of Washington which describes itself as "a remarkably academy of the mind created by Ramtha the Enlightened One."