Prayers were offered at Masses throughout Ferns diocese over the weekend in anticipation of a report into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations there, which is expected to be published tomorrow.
The prayers asked that the faithful be open to the report and that people learn from it as they face into the future.
The report is to be presented to the Cabinet at its weekly meeting tomorrow.
A spokesman for Ferns diocese said yesterday that the weekend prayers followed requests from priests for guidance as to how they might prepare for the report's publication.
It is understood the 271-page report will be presented to the Cabinet by Minister of State for Health Brian Lenihan. It will not be circulated to Ministers in advance.
Mr Lenihan will brief Wexford TDs and MEP Avril Doyle after the Cabinet meeting, while Bishop Eamonn Walsh, apostolic administrator of Ferns diocese, will hold a press conference in Wexford to respond.
At the weekend the Bishop of Cork Most Rev John Buckley said in an RTÉ interview that the church must learn from the report. He was speaking after the annual Mass in Cork for victims of abuse in residential institutions run by religious congregations. The Mass, which was attended by an estimated 350 people, many of them former residents of the institutions, was celebrated by the papal nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto.
Meanwhile, it is claimed in a new book that senior clergy in Ferns wanted to be rid of their then bishop Brendan Comiskey from the mid-1990s. He resigned in April 2002.
In The Rambling Rector retired Church of Ireland rector Rev Norman Ruddock, who served in Wexford town until 2004, recalled that many senior Catholic priests in Ferns gave little loyalty to Bishop Comiskey after his return in 1996 following treatment for alcoholism in the US.
They "expressed strong views that Brendan should go. He had rocked the boat, and caused them embarrassment . . . the knives were out," said Rev Ruddock.
