Kennedy first played competitive hurling in his youth. At club level he played for Birr. He made his senior inter-county debut during the 1975 All-Ireland Championship and immediately became a regular member of the team. In the 1980 Championship, he played in the Leinster and All-Ireland finals, gaining winner's and loser's medals respectively.[4]In 1981 he won a second Leinster and first All-Ireland medal an unused substitute in both finals. Questioned by Mick Dunne after the latter, he said "I drank, I smoked, I prayed."[5]
A sermon Kennedy preached at two masses in Dungarvan on 10 September 1995 caused a sensation.[10][11] He claimed an unnamed local woman who had emigrated to London ten years previously had returned after testing HIV positive and was having casual sex in a bid to infect as many men as possible, with five having already tested positive and scores more awaiting results.[1] Journalist John Murphy was in the congregation and reported the story in the following day's Cork Examiner; it was picked up by national and international media.[10] Kennedy's parish priest and bishop told him to share any information with the local health board.[12] No corroborating evidence emerged and Kennedy continually revised his account.[10] The consensus was that the story was statistically impossible and an urban myth of the AIDS panic.[7][13][14][15][16] Feminists criticised it as propagating a temptress stereotype.[15][17][18] Rumours named two different women as the "Angel of Death" or "AIDS Avenger", one of whom later alleged harassment in subsequent months.[10][11] In 2000, The Atlantic Monthly published a short story based on the incident.[19] In 2007 Kennedy was reported to be still insisting on the veracity of his claims.[13]
Subsequent career
In early 1996, during the Northern Ireland peace process, Kennedy preached against IRA "men of violence".[11] In 2001 he was made parish priest of Dunhill/Fenor.[2][13] In October 2006 two drug addicts he had befriended were convicted of making unwarranted demands with menace for money, after a 2003 threat to falsely accuse him of sexual abuse.[13][20] Kennedy had been suspended from ministry after reporting the 2003 threat.[13][21] He spent time in Canada but returned to Dunhill in early 2006 and began saying Mass in defiance of his suspension.[21] He was placed on administrative leave in June 2006[2] and in 2007 he was in St. John of God Hospital, Stillorgan.[13] In 2009 the church ordered him to vacate Dunhill parochial house and move to a church-owned house in nearby Ballylaneen.[22] Parishioners were reportedly divided, some supporting Kennedy and others Bishop William Lee.[23] In 2016 a church spokesman said Kennedy was "subject to a monitoring programme involving both the diocesan authorities and the Gardaí" but had not been laicised.[24]
^ abGoldstein, Diane E. (1 August 2004). "Bad People and Body Fluids: Contemporary Legend and AIDS Discourse". Once upon a virus: AIDS legends and vernacular risk perception. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press. pp. 47–48. doi:10.2307/j.ctt4cgmww.6. ISBN9780874215878.
