There is no anti-Catholic bias in the media “in general”, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin (pictured) has said.

Speaking on yesterday’s Morning Ireland programme on RTE, he criticised the station over the time it took to admit it had wrongly accused Fr Kevin Reynolds, parish priest of Ahascragh, Co Galway, of raping a minor and fathering a child with her in Africa 30 years ago.

However, he said that he believed that there “may be an anti-Catholic bias by some journalists but I don’t think that in general you can say there’s an anti-Catholic bias in the media”.

Archbishop Martin also called for independent regulation of the media adding that there was a need to ensure a “basic balance between the right to investigate and press freedom and the protection of the rights of individuals”.

However, the Association of Catholic Priests questioned his assertion that the media was not biased.

In a statement, they welcomed Archbishop Martin’s comments about the case, but said that the Fr Reynolds case showed “what seems to us very much like bias in at least two instances”.

They said that the fact that RTE were not willing to wait until Fr. Reynolds had a chance to prove his innocence “suggests to us that they were confident that anything could safely be said about a priest in the present climate without fear of repercussions……and that people generally would believe the story”.

They added: “That they door-stepped Fr. Reynolds in both a time and place that is sacred to the Catholic faith. There is, we believe, no doubt that RTE, or indeed any journalist, would not do the same to an Iman in the precincts of his mosque, or to a Jewish rabbi at his synagogue.”

The statement acknowledged that Archbishop Martin had “not experienced any harassment by media”.

However, it said that “the experience of ordinary priests and religious who have spoken on programmes has sometimes been very different”.

“The collateral damage done to priests and religious in general, and to innocent priests in particular, has been significant”.