Bishop Magee due to return home from America to respond to Cloyne Report findings

Reports claim that the disgraced former Bishop of Cloyne, Dr John Magee, will return from America "shortly" to face the music.

The retired Bishop is believed to be in America as the fall-out continues from the damning report into clerical child abuse in his diocese.

Dr Magee has not been seen publicly since the report slammed his handling of child sex abuse allegations during his time as leader of the Catholic Church in the Cork diocese.

He has yet to respond to allegations within the report that he failed to stop a widespread cover-up of abuse in the diocese and took little or no interest in the allegations.

The report is also critical of the fact that the Bishop didn’t get involved in investigating the allegations until 2008 while his Diocese officials consistently failed to report many child abuse cases to the civil authorities.

The former bishop hasn’t been seen at his home in the Cork town of Mitchelstown for over a month and the Sunday Independent believes it tracked him down to America this week.

The paper quotes a man, claiming to be the Bishop’s brother, who said Dr Magee would return to Ireland in the near future.

The man refused to say where his brother was but did confirm: “He will be back in a couple of weeks.”

The man, who also declined to give the paper his name, added: “He will be back in the country at some point.”

The Cloyne report states that only six of 15 cases of alleged child abuse were reported to police by Diocesan officials between 1996 and 2005.

Two Bishops have called on Dr Magee to return to Ireland while the government’s Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald also condemned his absence when the report was published.

“It would have been helpful for all of the victims if Bishop Magee had been there to respond,” said the Minister.

“From a responsibility point of view, I would have welcomed his presence. But he decided not to be there.”

The Cloyne Report also discloses that a man claimed two years ago that, when he was 17 and an aspiring priest, he was the subject of an approach from Bishop Magee.

The man claimed that Bishop Magee had embraced him, kissed him on the forehead and told him he loved him and dreamed about him but the incident was deemed inappropriate behavior rather than sexual abuse.