Church plans to investigate how a priest showed gay pornographic images to a young child have been thrown into disarray – after his laptop was stolen.

Father Martin McVeigh projected 16 indecent images of men during a First Communion meeting with the child and a group of parents in Pomeroy last month.

At the time Fr McVeigh said: “I don’t know how it happened but I know what happened.

“There are people making innuendos who weren’t even there but in this day and age these stories grow.  All I can do is let the incident be investigated and be open to that investigation so that what happened can be legitimately explained.”

Now plans to investigate the incident have been seriously hampered by the theft of the computer from the priest’s house.

The Irish Times reports that the computer is believed to have been the only item stolen.
Police have made a public appeal to help solve the crime.

The priest has also told police that he has ‘no idea’ where the images came from and that the memory stick on which they were placed was used by a ‘number of people’.

The diocese of Armagh has established an internal enquiry but the theft may detail their investigations.