Shamed cleric Pat Buckley could avoid being sent to jail next week despite admitting his involvement in 14 sham marriages.
The self-styled bishop pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of conspiracy to defraud by officiating at weddings intended to flout immigration laws. However, Belfast Crown Court was told that given his worsening health and the fact he was not an instigator of the scam, a suspended prison sentence could be justified.
Leaving court, Buckley (61) said he felt a "heaviness of heart" on admitting his wrongdoing but described his criminal conviction as "technical".
The accusations against him were revealed by The Irish News in 2011 - when he was said to deny them "unreservedly" - and were the subject of a failed complaint by the dissident cleric to the Press Complaints Commission.
The former priest, who had been due to face a retrial in the new year, pleaded guilty to 14 charges of conspiracy to defraud, while five others dating from 2004 to 2009 were not proceeded with. His defence barrister said Buckley's compassionate nature had been abused by others and he initially saw nothing untoward in what he was doing. However, he said that by his guilty pleas he "readily accepts that when the marriages became more frequent and indeed frenetic their purposes became obvious... and by his plea, accepts he knew their true nature". Earlier a prosecution lawyer had described Buckley as a cog in the fraud, rather than a wheel, but an important and necessary cog nonetheless.