Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Patricia McKeever does not like to be photographed. She does not like people to know where she lives and prefers to communicate with the outside world by letter or e-mail.

But, from the security of her home, the 58-year-old former secondary school teacher has co-ordinated a relentless campaign to name and shame gay Roman Catholic priests.

Her newsletter , Catholic Truth, has so far confronted up to a dozen priests about their alleged homosexuality and has named at least four as being gay or allegedly associating with gay men.

It claims to have privately challenged several more priests after receiving information that they attended a gay bar in Glasgow and has also, it says, confronted a seminarian, a prospective seminarian and a Catholic school teacher.

It is currently preparing a “dossier” on a priest it accuses of inviting a homosexual support group into his church and expects to identify him in the newsletter’s next issue.

But what Ms McKeever calls her “great work of charity” has not met with universal approval. The Archdiocese of Glasgow has labelled her group as “self-appointed heresy hunters” and accused her of harassment.

Worse, she recently had to call the police after receiving package after package of hard-core pornography.

Ms McKeever, who intends to expose all priests “unconscionably living a double life”, told The Times in a telephone interview that she had been forced to take action because of an “unprecedented moral crisis” in the Catholic Church”. She was not prepared to have her photograph taken. She said: “The Church has always taught that homosexuality is contrary to its teachings. Homosexual priests do not believe in the Catholic faith any more so they shouldn’t be in the Church.

“I would prefer the bishops to tackle this but, because they are not doing that, we feel it is our duty to let fellow Catholics know what is going on.”

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