AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury
By ELLE WATSON July 31, 2013
A Greta-Branxton Catholic school principal has rejected former Maitland-Newcastle Diocese bishop Michael Malone’s account of a 2002 meeting in which the bishop claimed he warned the principal to keep parish priest James Fletcher away from students.
William Callinan told the special commission of inquiry into alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, that he first heard of the alleged meeting when Bishop Malone called him “out of the blue” in March 2003.
The principal said Bishop Malone told him Fletcher should have been stood down earlier, that they (Callinan and the bishop) made a decision together in 2002 to keep Fletcher in the parish and instructed him to tell people Fletcher was sick and about to be stood down.
“I was in disbelief – I could not recall any conversation we had previously on the Fletcher situation … I think I would have remembered it because it’s not often a bishop visits you,” Mr Callinan told the inquiry.
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