Father Brian D'Arcy has fiercely criticised the Catholic Church as he spoke about surviving child abuse on The Tommy Tiernan Show on Saturday night.
The popular priest slammed the Church for putting "its good name" before the needs of vulnerable children.
Speaking candidly about his experiences, he said: "It gave me the courage to speak truth to power... I'm sure if I hadn't had to survive abuse, I wouldn't have had the same conviction when I was speaking.
"And I can say to anybody now, to the Pope or anybody else: any institution that puts the good name of the institution ahead of the vulnerability of a child deserves no respect."
However, he denied that his experiences made him a "healer", telling Tommy Tiernan that he believes healing has to "come from within".
"I'm not sure that I am a healer, I'm not sure about that", Father D'Arcy said.
The audience burst into applause as he ended his brave speech.
Father D'Arcy has been vocal about clerical child abuse in the past and has criticised the Church for their failure to take responsibility.
Earlier this year, the outspoken priest said the Church had failed to acknowledge the damage caused by child abuse.
He told Sean O'Rourke on RTE Radio 1: “There’s something systematically wrong within the set-up in the church that’s failed to acknowledge the damage that the abuse of children and young people results in.
“But there’s something even worse, there’s this failure to acknowledge that it’s an ongoing deeply-rooted within the system itself failure and unless we tackle that everything else is merely window dressing."
