Fr Bernárd J Lynch
A London Irish Story as told to Anna Johnston
Bernárd is an openly gay priest, author and activist who has worked for the rights of LGBT+ people for over 40 years. Bernárd and I sat down for a conversation over Zoom and he told me all about his fascinating story.
“I was born in Ennis Co. Clare. I always wanted to become a priest. When I was a child, I’d imitate mass and get some Marietta biscuits as my communion wafers and water, of course, was the wine. I went to the local Christian Brothers School where there was a lot of brutality from the teachers and if you didn’t learn it was beaten into you. When I finished school, I did my novitiate in The Society of African Missions and then went to Newry to do my theologate for 6 years. I spent two years in Zambia before being asked to go to University in New York in 1975. There I studied psychology and theology. In contrast to my childhood schooling days, it was wonderful to find that I was being treated with respect and my intelligence blossomed there.
I had no idea that I was gay growing up. I just knew I wasn't as sexually attracted to girls as my friends were.
To study psychology in the US you had to go into therapy yourself, which at that time was very unusual. It was during my time in therapy that I began to undo my sexual pathology and discovered that I was gay.
I said more prayers than ever just so that God would take it away but alas God is much cleverer than that and eventually I came to terms with the fact that this is the way I am.
New York was a sexually open society, especially in the LGBT+ community in 1975, post Stonewall. I found a group called Dignity, which was fundamentally a group of LGBT+ Catholics, who met for mass and to socialise. They would have mass in a Protestant church as they were not accepted in the Catholic Church. It really blew my mind that there was that level of oppression. It was hard realising that I'm not welcome in my own church, to which I'd given my life. I used to attend the mass for the Catholic LGBT+ group and I would not tell anybody who I was.
One Saturday evening mass the usual priest didn’t show up and there was a group of 200 people worried that they wouldn’t receive mass. In that moment I told them I was a priest. Of course that was me out of the closet. Soon after that our numbers grew from 200 to 1200.
In 1980, people started getting sick and they weren't getting better. They were developing a very rare cancer called Kaposi Sarcoma and very rare pneumonia called Pneumocystis Carinii and nobody knew why. GRID (Gay related immune deficiency) had begun, and many people turned to religion for help. I was barraged with requests to visit and help people during this time. After mass one day I asked the congregation for help, and we founded the first AIDS ministry in New York City in 1982. By 1990, 600 of our 1200 members had died. I had seen more death and suffering than I ever could have imagined. Most of these men who died were in their 20s. They hadn't imagined their life, never mind their deaths. Many of them were rejected by their families, kicked out of their homes and lost their jobs when they were discovered to be HIV/AIDS positive. Some of them were Irish, Irish born or Irish American. We were told by the church and by society at large, that we deserved it for engaging in perverted sex. I was totally radicalised by what I saw, man's inhumanity to man!
While I was in New York I testified for a bill that was before the city council which said that no one could discriminate against people in jobs and housing if they were part of the LGBT+ community. I knew once I testified, I would lose my job- which I did. But the bill finally passed along with the help of others.
The catholic church then saw me as a traitor to their theology and wanted to have me deported from the United States, but they couldn’t as I then had a US passport.
Instead, they ordered me to Rome to have me out of the way and with the help of the FBI they went to the school I used to work in as the Chaplin and found a boy who said he would falsely accuse me of molesting him for $15 million. I knew I was innocent of this, but I found out that the case would be going to trial. It was a big showcase aimed at me, but it was more to say to anyone who worked for the Catholic Church, ‘if you stand up against us, we'll get you.’ The boy on the stand was aged 19 during the trial and finally admitted that he had been put up to it and that he had been promised $15 million. The judge was outraged by the prosecution and so the judge declared me to be innocent.
I stayed working helping AIDS/ HIV for 40 years and it was the reason I came to London. I came here in 1992 and worked with an organisation called CARA, care and resources for people with AIDS, which had an office across from London lighthouse.
I only intended on staying here for three years initially but I met my husband, Billy, so that changed everything!
We met and fell in love and had a blessing in 1998 as we couldn’t get married back then and then had a civil partnership in Camden when that became legal. I was the founding co-chair of the London Irish LGBT Network and we campaigned for “Take the boat to vote” to get people in the UK to go back to Ireland to vote for marriage equality. When the marriage referendum passed in Ireland, Billy and I went home to Co. Clare and got married in January 2017. We were the first same sex marriage to happen in Co. Clare. Billy and I have a holiday home in the west of Ireland, but I would find it very difficult to move back full time. Although I came from a small town, I’m a city boy. I love the hustle and bustle of Camden Town. I’m settled in London now and still do masses and weddings for same sex couples or sometimes funerals. It now just has to be outside of the church but that’s okay because the world is my church.”
Find out more about Fr Bernárd Lynch’s story on his website, where he has links to his books and documentaries www.frbernardlynch.com
