Tony Flannery

The sudden ending of the investigation of the Leadership of the American Nuns by the Vatican is, in my view, a really significant event. I suspect that when we look back, it will stand out as one of the seminal moments in the papacy of Francis.

Despite some of the content of the final document, this is clearly a major climb-down by the CDF. Some things had to be put in, some signs of the ‘apparent’ success of the CDF’s crackdown, in order that their credibility would not be totally destroyed.  

Press Release

New Era – Last chance: Catholic Priests Associations and Reform Groups unite in International Conference in Limerick, Ireland

Limerick, 16.04.2015. “With the resignation of Pope Benedict we are at the end of an era, and this is our best chance to renew the church for a long time“, Father Tony Flannery of the Irish Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) saidduring an international conference in Limerick that brought together over 30 Catholic priests and church citizens from Ireland, Austria, Australia, Germany, India, Italy, Slovakia, Switzerland, the U.K.

It is now Wednesday night, and our conference is nearly at an end.  I haven’t been able to write much about it on this blog, for a number of reasons.  It has been enormously busy, and draining of energy. But much more, what has been happening here over the past three days among the forty of us who are gathered, is at such a depth and an intensity that it will take me some time to process it in my head, and to be able to make any attempt at describing it.