BILL Carney, the ex-priest exposed as a notorious paedophile, is living out of a bed and breakfast since his wife divorced him.
The former priest has been moving between rented rooms after the proceedings concluded late last year.
The couple ran a bed and breakfast in Scotland before he was named as a serial child abuser in the Murphy report.
He would have been entitled to up to half the proceeds of the business, which was put on the market for more than £600,000 (€712,000) in 2009 but sold for significantly less.
News of the divorce will interest the many victims of the former cleric, who was forced out of the priesthood for abusing children.
Carney, who lives in the UK, faces a rash of civil actions since the Murphy report on clerical sex abuse named him as a serial offender suspected of abusing up to 32 children.
The priest, described as foul-mouthed and loutish, is believed to have been staying in a bed and breakfast in Staffordshire, England, since his divorce last September.
Gardai are investigating a number of complaints made by his victims and are in contact with the authorities but Carney has not been questioned by police.
Contacted by the Sunday Independent this weekend, Paul Clayton, whose mother divorced Carney in September, says that his understanding is that the ex-priest is still claiming he is innocent.
"He is telling people that he has done nothing wrong. And people are believing him because, he says, if he had done something wrong, the authorities would have done something about it by now. He has told me that he has made himself available for questioning and nobody is interested."
Carney pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two altar boys in 1983.
Afterwards, he was moved from parish to parish for a decade before he finally left the priesthood with a £30,000 pay-out from the church.
While still at large in Dublin, he took young boys caddying at the elite Royal Dublin Golf Club, where he won a player of the year award.
He was expelled from the club and news of his conviction emerged in the mid-1990s and he left for Gloucestershire where he met his wife, married and opened a bed and breakfast in St Andrew's, a university and golfing town in Scotland.
The Murphy report revealed him to be a serial abuser who acted in concert with other paedophile priests.
Carney was in Spain with his wife when the report was published over a year ago.
His wife started divorce proceedings against him, which concluded late last year.
Judge Yvonne Murphy's Commission of Investigation into the Dublin archdiocese said Carney was the subject of 32 complaints and there was evidence that he abused many more children.
Six victims were paid compensation by church authorities.
The Murphy report also noted that Carney was linked with three other paedophile priests, including Fr Tony Walsh, who was jailed in December for child sexual abuse.
The others included Fr Francis McCarthy, with whom Carney took children on holidays, and Fr Patrick Maguire, who sometimes accompanied Carney when he took children swimming.
Maguire and McCarthy later confessed to abusing children and were both convicted.
The report by Judge Murphy found "no direct evidence" of a paedophile ring" but noted "worrying connections" between a number of priests.
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