AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
May 21, 2013
Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age.
Paedophile priests in Melbourne were moved from parish to parish in a culture of secrecy and cover-up in which the Catholic Church was slow to act, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said on Thursday.
A predecessor, Sir Frank Little, dealt with all complaints secretly, keeping no records. He moved paedophiles such as serial abusers Wilfred Baker and Kevin O’Donnell to “innocent parishes” where they blighted more lives, Archbishop Hart conceded at the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled child sexual abuse.
“It was an awful blight on the church. I want to put my anger and pain and anguish about this to the committee.”
He said before 1996, when he became Vicar-General in Melbourne and Cardinal George Pell became Archbishop, the church was “too keen to look after herself and her good name and not keen enough to look after the terrible anguish of the victims. Since the 1990s, that has changed – slowly and with agony, but it has changed.”
In a public statement, Archbishop Hart said he took responsibility, but he told the inquiry the only person responsible was the archbishop at the time.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.