Catholic Church Men Divided over Scandal

By Dan Box
The Australian
July 5, 2012

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/catholic-church-men-divided-over-scandal/story-e6frg6nf-1226418312131

TWO senior clerics at the centre of the latest sex scandal to engulf the Catholic Church have given conflicting accounts of a meeting 20 years ago where a priest admitted abusing young boys.

Brian Lucas, secretary-general of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, was one of three church officials who interviewed the priest in 1992, when he allegedly confessed to groping and performing oral sex on altar boys.

Yesterday, Father Lucas said the priest, known as Father F for legal reasons, "made no admissions of a specific nature".

"He was very careful about not naming any names and, on that basis, we didn't have anything we could take to police," Father Lucas said.

This account of the meeting appears to contradict that given by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who told the ABC this week that he did not believe any such admission had been made.

"I certainly didn't know that; I'm surprised at that. I would take the word of three priests against that allegation," Cardinal Pell told Four Corners.

"I think it's fair enough for Brian Lucas, as one of those three priests, to have me speak for him . . . and what he said about what happened at that particular meeting."

Cardinal Pell did not speak to Father Lucas before being interviewed for the program, relying instead on the account of John Usher, chancellor of the archdiocese of Sydney, who was also present at the 1992 meeting.

Monsignor Usher spoke to Father Lucas and to the third cleric present at the meeting, Wayne Peters, now the vicar-general of the Armidale diocese in northern NSW, before reporting back to the archbishop.

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Sydney last night said Monsignor Usher "has confirmed his recollection that Father F made no admissions of actual criminal conduct".

"Monsignor Usher has confirmed he would have reported this to the police."

Father Peters gave his own account of the 1992 meeting in a letter written shortly after, which said Father F "admitted that there had been five boys around the age of 10 and 11 that he had sexually interfered with".

Two of the boys were subject to physical abuse over a year, the letter said, during which time "he fondled the genitals of each of these boys and, to quote, 'sucked off their dicks'."

The letter does not include the alleged victims' names.

Father F, who now lives in Armidale, faced trial, in 1988, for assaulting a 15-year-old boy, but the case was dismissed.

After the 1992 meeting he was suspended from the ministry, but continued to play an active role as a lay member of his local church.

In 2002 another alleged victim of Father F wrote to Cardinal Pell detailing the abuse he had suffered. The archbishop referred this complaint to the Armidale diocese, saying he did not have authority over the priest.

Father F was formally defrocked three years later, in 2005.

The archdiocese of Sydney yesterday said the church had announced an independent investigation into the allegations surrounding Father F and that "Cardinal Pell will ensure . . . Monsignor Usher and Father Lucas will fully co-operate with this investigation".

Asked if any of the clerics could face censure, the spokeswoman repeated Monsignor Usher had "confirmed his recollection that Father F made no admissions of actual criminal conduct".

The church had also offered NSW police its "full co-operation". "In the meantime, we will await the outcome of the Armidale investigation."

Cardinal Pell's office did not respond to written questions last night.