Tony Flannery

In the almost fifteen years now since I was suspended from ministry as a priest, I have regularly complained about the lack of due process in the dealings with my case, and also the fact that there was no appeals process. Now I discover that I was wrong. There is an appeals body in the Curia. It is known as the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and it is an established body within the Vatican, and one of its functions is to deal with cases of the removal of a priest’s ministerial faculties.

I was born into a rural, small-farming household in the West of Ireland just after the Second World War. From a religious point of view, my upbringing was about as traditional as you could imagine.

Mass, confession, benediction, and novena to Our Lady in a nearby monastery every Saturday.

My parents were religious, but I think towards the end of their lives, they began to have questions of their own. Maybe not so much my father, who died in his early sixties, but more obviously my mother, who lived almost to ninety.

This is the link to an Irish Times article on Jean Sulivan, The Prophetic Voice. Sulivan was a Catholic Priest of the last century.

It is a fascinating book; not least because Eamon has a chapter on myself, describing me also as a prophetic voice!!!!!

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2026/06/16/jean-sulivan-a-prophet-who-lived-the-priesthood-of-the-pen/