Bishop Drennan is based in Palmerston North and is also a member of Te Rōpū Tautoko - the group set up by the Catholic Church to liaise with the Royal Commission of inquiry.
Sex offender at Royal Commission
Last month it also emerged that the partner and support person of one of the Commission's survivor advisory group members is a convicted child sex offender.
There were calls for the commissioners to resign following revelations the sex offender - who is a partner of a member of the advisory group - was involved in their meetings.
The man's partner said she had no intention of resigning from the group despite some of its members saying they had been retraumatised after learning of his convictions.
The man told RNZ he hadn't attended the meetings, but admitted being in the room.
"I didn't attend them. I was there to support my partner in the room. I didn't attend any of the meetings per se," he said.
The man said he talked to some of the survivors at those gatherings, but his contact was limited and he did not join them for meals.
"I was not sitting with them. Me and my partner were sitting at a table away from them."
NZ bishops 'thumbing their noses' at pope over confidentiality
This comes after New Zealand's Catholic bishops were accused of lacking moral leadership for deciding whether to waive confidentiality clauses in compensation agreements reached with abuse survivors.
The Crown said it would lift any confidential obligations so state ward survivors could tell their stories legally unimpeded at the Commission.
However, Te Rōpū Tautoko, the group established by Catholic bishops and congregational leaders to provide a co-ordinated response to the Commission, said 60 Catholic organisations were being left to decide individually on whether to waive.
Its chairperson Catherine Fyfe said the group had recommended confidentiality waivers be issued, but that the groups, which included religious orders like the Marist Fathers, exercised autonomy as separate legal entities in civic law and the church's own canon law. She said bishops didn't have the authority to decide for them.
"The church is a wide and diverse set of organisations without a single national decision-maker that can bind the whole church, so each organisation needs to consider the recommendation and feed back to us," she said.
Abuse survivor and advocate Anne Hill, 56, said it was inappropriate for bishops to have remained silent on the issue.
