Dublin.

IRISH bishops are acutely embarrassed that disgraced prelate Eamonn

Casey plans to return to Ireland after he completes an assignment as a

missionary priest in Equador.

Publication 18 months ago of Bishop Casey's love affair with American

divorcee, Annie Murphy, presented the Irish Roman Catholic Church with

its most traumatic public scandal.

However, in an exclusive interview published in the Sunday Tribune

newspaper in Dublin yesterday, Casey, 66, said: ''Nobody is stopping me

from going home.''

Many of his former colleagues are reported to be dismayed at his

reopening of the circumstances surrounding the scandal.

In the interview, Bishop Casey spoke of how, in 1973, he became

infatuated with Ms Murphy.

He insisted that it was only shortly before the birth of their son,

Peter, in 1974, that she told him that he was the father.

He said he had struggled with ''the impropriety'' of having sex with

her. He said that he always confessed his transgression before saying

Mass.