Dublin archbishop removes priests from Ireland’s largest seminary over gay dating allegations

The Catholic archbishop of Dublin has removed trainee priests from Ireland’s largest seminary over allegations of widespread use of the gay sex app Grindr and the failure of the authorities to properly investigate it.

 

The move is the latest scandal to hit the Catholic Church in Ireland, once the defining influence on public life, but now humbled by reports of child sex abuse stretching back decades and of church leaders’ complicity in covering them up.

 

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said a series of anonymous allegations about a gay sex culture at the Maynooth seminary, where over 50 students are training to be priests, had been compounded by the college authorities’ failure to investigate.

 

“One (allegation) is that there is a homosexual, gay culture, that students have been using an app called Grindr, which would be inappropriate for seminarians and not just because they are going to be celibate priests,” Martin said in an interview with Irish state broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.

 

“If this is going on a large scale in the seminary and it hasn’t been noticed in the seminary, then there is something wrong,” he said.

 

Read More: Dublin archbishop removes priests from Ireland’s largest seminary over gay dating allegations – Business Insider