The Archbishop of Armagh supported the Religious Sisters of Charity’s request to surrender ownership of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to enable the building of the national maternity hospital (NMH), but he would publicly oppose abortions being performed there.

Eamon Martin said in a letter in December to Jude Thaddeus Okolo, the papal nuncio, that work in a maternity hospital should, by definition, be “pro-life”.

“The archbishop [said] there is a serious need for a proper NMH in order to be able to provide high-quality maternity healthcare for mothers and their babies in contemporary Ireland,” said Martin’s spokesman in a statement responding to questions from The Sunday Times.

“He said the carrying out of abortions or morally illicit medical procedures at the NMH would be repugnant” to Catholic teaching and “regardless of the eventual outcome of the proposed transfer, the church will remain clear in its public statements that there is no place in a maternity hospital for abortion”.

Additionally, Martin told Okolo that an accusation made by some people “that the sisters were engaged in formal or proximate co-operation with abortion” was unsustainable as their intention to transfer their ownership predated “the regrettable removal of the eighth amendment [which] sadly had given way to a much more liberal abortion regime in this country”.