AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter
Stephen Crittenden | Jul. 15, 2013
NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA
An Australian bishop told a special commission of inquiry into sexual abuse that he failed to familiarize himself with the personnel file of a serial pedophile priest “because the whole area of sexual abuse is so distasteful that I would have found it very unpalatable to dig further.”
The inquiry has been asked to report on whether the Catholic church covered up abuse by two pedophile priests of the diocese of Maitland-Newcastle — Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher — or hindered police investigations.
McAlinden died in 2005 without being convicted. Fletcher died in jail in 2006.
During several weeks of public hearings, it seemed the inquiry, chaired by New South Wales Senior Deputy Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen, would tackle little more than an internecine dispute within the state police department.
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