CHURCH leaders in the US have sparked fury by agreeing a pension deal worth almost $100,000 (€83,500) with Irish paedophile priest Oliver O'Grady.O'Grady is to pocket about $788 (€688) a month over the next 10 years as part of a secret agreement with the Californian dioceses at the centre of his vile abuse.
Reports in the US say the Stockton Diocese, where O'Grady abused dozens of youngsters in the Seventies and Eighties, bought an annuity seven years ago, guaranteeing O'Grady a monthly pension.
The fund, which is now worth $94,560 (€79,000), is set to pay out from this weekend when O'Grady, who recently returned to Ireland, turns 65 years of age.
The annuity cost the diocese nearly $11,000 annually over a seven-year period and was paid for in 2009.
The payments will be made directly to O'Grady from an insurance company.
Victim Nancy Sloan, 45, who was sexually abused by O'Grady when she was aged just 11, said she was sickened by the payout to the paedophile.
"He gets rewarded. I get very frustrated," she said.
"The church has certainly gone back on its word countless times.
"I don't know why it wouldn't even cross their minds to go back on the annuity -- give it back to a victims' fund."
Bishop Stephen Blaire, who took over leadership of the diocese in 1999, said the deal had been agreed following O'Grady's release from jail in 2000.
He said he wanted Limerick-born O'Grady stripped of his priesthood at the time, but that defrocking a priest was a "long and cumbersome process".
The only sure way to make that happen was for O'Grady to agree for his authority to work as a priest to be taken away in a process known as laicisation
"He was going to be paroled in November 2000," Bishop Blaire said.
"I was determined that he would not leave prison as a priest. His lawyer told me O'Grady would consider seeking laicisation if a pension annuity would be made available to him."
SIC: II