A young woman was given last rites to "cure" her homosexuality by a sick priest with "sexual fantasies", it has emerged.
Marina Forrestal was anointed with oil on her body by the man who delivered the sacrament of the sick.
It happened during the 70s and the practice, ritually used to "cure" homosexuality, was uncovered in a documentary.
As a young lesbian she described the process usually carried out as part of final rites to the sick or dying, as “ritual abuse” in the hour-long RTE film Outitude.
The Irish Mirror told how Ms Forrestal revealed she had her hands anointed against masturbation during the sacrament.
And she later received reports from gay men that had their genitals anointed in the same religious practice.
The artist and community organiser told how she looked for solace in her weekly prayer group, which was part of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement, to help her get over romantic heartbreak.
“I met my first girlfriend in 1974. When we split, I was really lovesick, I couldn't get over it by myself. I needed help,” said Ms Forrestal.
“Within my support group actually there was a priest who was supposed to have a gift of healing and he invited me to come and have a number of sessions with him.
“During one of the sessions, he told me that I shouldn't look at any women's magazines anymore because of the underwear ads.
“He did recession therapy with me which involved me lying down and closing my eyes and going into some kind of, I don’t know, altered state, I suppose.
“He got me to do these imagination things where I was to imagine I was in bed with a lover. And then Jesus came into the room and saw us together and he wanted to know how did I think Jesus felt.”
But she said the priest wasn’t pleased when she told him she thought “Jesus was fine” and slammed his fist on the table near her.
Ms Forrestal added: “Now he said, ‘if you're going to continue to romanticise this thing, I'm not going to be able to help you any further’.”
In the next session, she said the priest carried out the sacrament of the sick on her.
She said: “This is Extreme Unction. This is what you get when you're going to die, also what you get when you're sick, to heal you.
“So he took out a bottle of oil and he asked me if I had any connection with the occult first so I said ‘no’ and so he did this anointing of the oil.
“He asked me did I masturbate, and he anointed my hands against masturbation.
“I had to say how sorry, I was, and stuff. “
She said the Catholic priest also anointed other parts of her body, adding: "When he came to my genitals, he told me I was to take the bottle home, thank goodness.
“I have since spoken with men who have had their genitals anointed in rituals like this. I now consider that to be ritual abuse.
“I think he had his sexual fantasies, I don't think he thought he was putting them on me but I think he was putting them on me.
“And I think that thing of the sacrament of the sick for being gay is a perversion.
“It was a shaming of me. And it was a ritual shaming. And it did involve sexuality. And it was wrong, it was very wrong.”
One of the women she met afterward on the confidential support line, Lesbian Line, accompanied her to one of her prayer meetings.
“She said 'they're all getting off on this'. She named it quite quickly. She said 'let's get out of here’.”
Looking back, she said it took a lot of time to exorcise the experience at the hands of the priest.
Outitude charts lesbian grass-roots activism, collectives, community, academia, and politics across the island of Ireland from the 1970s to the present day.
It details tales of coming out, experiences of homophobia, and the varied types of activism in the Irish lesbian community.
