14/09/2026
Bishop Phonsie and Tom Monaghan are turning West Waterford into a training camp for far right extremism!
The planned Melleray university program has no accreditation, and no planning permission.
Bishop "Phonsie" Cullinan began studying for the priesthood at St Patrick's College, Maynooth in 1989, completing a two-year course in philosophy before completing further studies in theology. As a student, he occasionally visited events in Dublin organised by Opus Dei and the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross.
The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross is an association of Catholic diocesan priests which is integrally united to the Prelature of Opus Dei.
Part of the society is made up of the clergy of the Opus Dei prelature-members of the priesthood who fall under the jurisdiction of the Opus Dei prelature are automatically members of the Priestly Society. Other members in the society are traditional diocesan priests-clergy who remain under the jurisdiction of their diocesan bishop.
Ave Maria University (AMU) is a private Catholic university in Ave Maria, Florida, United States.
The school was founded by philanthropist and entrepreneur Tom Monaghan. In 2024, the enrollment was 1,326 students.
Bishop Phonsie Cullinan and American pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan want you to believe the takeover of Mount Melleray is a holy miracle. The local media in Waterford is happy to print their glossy PR scripts and point out how wonderful this new initiative is.
However peeling back to the truth of the matter and a different picture emerges. The Phonsie Festival with pomp and ceremony is little more than another financial transaction between the Catholic Church and another MAGA supporter.
A new MAGA training ground with its own Overlord is brought into County Waterford by the Bishop.
In a May 2004 speech, Monaghan expressed his wish to have the new town and university campus be free from pre-marital s*x, contraceptives and po*******hy.
This elicited sharply critical statements from the international press, who saw such proposed restrictions as violations of civil liberties.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union branch in Florida, challenged the legality of the restriction of sales of contraceptives.
He said, "This is not just about the sale of contraceptives in the local pharmacy, it is about whether in an incorporated town there will be a fusion of religion and government."
An opinion column in The Wall Street Journal quoted an Ave Maria faculty member who called it a "Catholic Jonestown".
Frances Kissling of Catholics for Choice compared Monaghan's civic vision to Islamic fundamentalism, and called it "un-American".
In response, Monaghan announced a milder form of civic planning in which the town could mostly grow on its own, except that it would not have s*x shops or strip clubs, and store owners would be asked rather than ordered not to sell contraceptives or p**n. Contraceptives and p**n would still be banned from the university.
The Waterford initiative has ZERO EDUCATIONAL STATUS:
The Irish Department of Higher Education has not approved or accredited this site as a university campus. Nor is it planning to do so.
There is absolutely ZERO PLANNING FOR EDUCATION:
Melleray abbey's legal planning status is for hostelry and pilgrim lodging. It has no legal permission to operate as a commercial, international third-level campus.
This is essentially A MAGA BEACHHEAD in Ireland:
This is an unapproved, un-zoned ideological training ground financed by a US billionaire, who funds far-right political lobbying.
Monaghan has been active in Republican Party politics, including MAGA, and was one of the key financial backers of Sam Brownback in his 2008 presidential campaign. Monaghan also endorses Donald Trump
Monaghan is reputed to be a member of Opus Dei and has been aligned with a number of other conservative Catholic organizations and causes.
Monaghan is a donor to Priests for Life, a Roman Catholic pro-life organization. He is a knight of magistral grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
If any ordinary Waterford citizen tried to run an un-zoned, unapproved commercial academy in the Knockmealdown mountains, Waterford Council would shut it down in 24 hours.
The 100 Florida students who just moved into the Knockmealdown mountains this month aren't living in registered student halls.
They are being housed inside the Mellerary's existing guest houses, the hotel and pilgrim lodges.
Legally, the abbey always had permission to house overnight pilgrims walking St. Declan’s Way.
A wonderful hostel operates at Mount Melleray to House pilgrims walking St. Declan's Way: St Declan's Way Hostel
Ave Maria University is exploiting this by framing residential, semester-long US academic study as a long-term "pilgrim stay". They are effectively using tourist accommodation as an un-zoned, unapproved international campus.
The 1,000 elite donors and "invited friends of the university" flying in for the September 20th opening mass cannot all sleep at the abbey.
They are block-booking local hotels, luxury guesthouses, and private rentals across West Waterford—specifically around Lismore, Cappoquin, and Dungarvan.
This is exactly how they bought the silence of local politicians and the press. By flooding the local hospitality sector with high-spending American MAGA dollars for a weekend, they create a temporary and artificial economic boost, that won't last.
The media prints glowing headlines about "tourism revitalisation" to distract working-class locals from the fact that public heritage has been leased out to a right-wing billionaire.
Under planning laws, you cannot host a massive political convention without a public event license. They are bypassing this by wrapping the entire event in a religious cloak.
Because it is framed as a "Special Mass" inside an existing place of worship, it requires no special council approval for crowd control, traffic management, or assembly.
Bishop Cullinan is using the church's traditional legal exemptions to hand over the keys of a landmark public monastery to Tom Monaghan's private network of right-wing financial backers, entirely insulated from public planning scrutiny.
We can only imagine what the sermon will be like on September 20th.
TAX FREE STATUS
Religious orders in Ireland, including the Cistercians and the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, operate under charitable tax-exempt status.
When they lease a massive asset like Mount Melleray Abbey to a multi-million-dollar American university entity, they are acting as commercial landlords.
Yet, because of their legal status, this transaction avoids the standard commercial taxes that any ordinary Waterford business would have to pay.
THE REDRESS SCANDAL: WHERE IS THE MONEY?
The Irish State has had to foot the bill for hundreds of millions of euros in compensation to survivors of industrial schools, Mother and Baby Homes, and clerical abuse because the religious orders have consistently dragged their feet, hidden their wealth, and refused to fully pay their agreed shares.
Bishop Phonsie Cullinan can roll out the red carpet for 1,000 wealthy MAGA donors and celebrate a multi-million-dollar international lease, but the institutional Church claims poverty when it comes to liquidating assets to pay comprehensive, uncompromising redress to victims of institutional abuse.
The scoping inquiry into s*xual abuse in schools run by religious orders identified 308 schools where nearly 2,400 instances of alleged abuse took place. A shocking level of abuse, we know it is the tip of the iceberg.
Again and again, brave survivors have come forward to disclose that they were abused. Shining an important light into a dark corner of Irish society, they have exposed horrors that should never have been allowed to happen.
We know that abuse was widespread in religious-run schools; survivors have lived with this fact for decades. Most Irish people my age or older will know someone who was directly affected. The scoping inquiry, the latest reckoning with that recent history, outlined the extent of the abuse.
For anyone who reads it, particular passages will haunt you. For me, the concentration of abuse in special schools sticks in my mind. Behind each statistic lie thousands of childhoods cruelly betrayed by those in positions of trust and power.
THE "VICTIM TAX" DEMAND
If any real morality or justice existed in Irish law, a 100% Retribution Tax would be slapped on every single commercial lease, land sale, or property transaction executed by the Catholic Church.
Every single cent generated by leasing Mount Melleray Abbey to Ave Maria University should be immediately seized by the state and ring-fenced directly for survivor support services and unpaid redress funds.
Same-s*x marriage
In his first pastoral letter to the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore in May 2015, Cullinan questioned whether a Yes vote in a referendum on permitting same-s*x marriage was "pandering to the desires of adults over the rights of children", emphasising that "children are different to adults just as the union of a man and a woman is different to any kind of relationship between two men or two women".
HPV vaccination
Cullinan caused controversy in September 2017 over comments he made on the HPV vaccination programme in Irish schools, which led to criticism from a number of sources, including the then-Minister for Health, Simon Harris.
He subsequently apologised if his remarks were misinterpreted outside of their respective context.
Abortion
Cullinan made headlines on 31 October 2017, over comments he made referring to abortion as "not a medical treatment".
Speaking on Déise Today on WLR FM on 2 February 2018, he claimed that contraception was "morally wrong" and had promoted promiscuity in Ireland. He added that abortion was not the answer for women suffering from suicidal ideation whose pregnancies have been as a result of r**e. Such claims were rejected by the chairperson of the Oireachtas committee on abortion, Catherine Noone.
Following the passing of a referendum on liberalising abortion laws on 25 May 2018, Cullinan stated on Déise Today on WLR FM on 1 June 2018 that Catholics who voted Yes in the referendum must acknowledge that they have sinned and repent before receiving Communion, and that by legislating for abortion access, Ireland "had effectively accepted euthanasia".
Exorcism
Speaking on Déise Today on WLR FM on 9 October 2018, Cullinan supported comments made by Pope Francis saying that the devil was responsible for the s*xual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, and announced plans to establish an exorcism ministry in the diocese to deal with evil spirits.
Such claims were subsequently condemned by political leaders.
Yoga and mindfulness
In a letter sent to Catholic primary schools in the diocese on 10 October 2019, Cullinan stated that yoga and mindfulness were "not Christian" and unsuitable for practice during periods of religious education.
Such claims were disputed by a number of sources, including former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese.
Periodically, Irish society is given pause for thought when we see the latest such report. We have had the Ryan Report, the mother and baby home report, and so many more. Each time, there are calls on the State to deliver justice to those affected, and rightly so.
Yet we know that those State redress schemes which have been introduced have had significant flaws. Victims and survivors are often retraumatised by inadequate redress processes or by their exclusion through the application of apparently arbitrary rules. Those mistakes cannot be repeated in the response to the scoping inquiry into schools; the response must be survivor-led.
However, if those State failures in redress processes are concerning, the attitude of certain religious orders has been far worse again. For years, religious orders have dodged accountability. Hiding behind complex legal structures, they have transferred their substantial property assets into the control of lay-run trusts, out of reach of the people against whom they enabled or facilitated perpetration of the worst crimes imaginable.
True accountability
In such cases, the lay-run trust holds all the assets, but they bear no legal liability for the abuse carried out by members of the religious order. Conversely, the religious order is liable to pay redress, but no longer owns sufficient assets to meet its obligations.
While there is nothing illegal about this grubby process, those religious orders which use such devices must answer serious ethical questions when they divest their assets in this way.
One of the first moral lessons any of us teaches our children, regardless of faith, is the need for contrition and honesty when we have done wrong. Can any of us say that the response of religious orders to historic abuse has embodied that principle?
Clearly, we cannot simply appeal to the moral or Christian duty of religious orders to ensure that their victims receive justice. The slow pace of action from that quarter, the avoidance of responsibility, and the legal obfuscations deployed all indicate the need for a stronger legislative framework to require adequate contribution to redress funds will be made by religious orders and their associated trusts. The time has come to compel religious orders to step up and pay their share.
Political will
On 25 June, this Thursday, the Dáil will debate Labour’s Civil Liability (Child Sexual Abuse Proceedings Against Unincorporated Bodies of Persons) Bill. Our Bill would enable the recovery of damages from the religious orders and the lay-run trusts into which the orders have often moved their considerable wealth. In short, those institutions that facilitated and perpetuated abuse in schools would be properly held to account.
No survivor should have to resort to the Courts to secure redress, but we know from experience that religious orders have been all too slow to engage and contribute their share.
The responsibility to make amends for past wrongs holds true for religious orders, just as it does for the State.
As the oppressive shadow of Catholic Church doctrine is lifting from the laws of the State, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the bravery of the Ryan Brothers, Colm O’Gorman and others – they and other survivors who came forward to share their experiences of abuse have already contributed to changing Ireland for the better.
