SCOTLAND
Scotland on Sunday
by MARTYN McLAUGHLIN
Published on the 08 September 2013
A PRIEST who has campaigned for the Catholic Church’s hierarchy to act against a fellow priest he claims abused him has been dismissed from his diocese and issued with a formal warning for speaking to the press, it has been claimed.
Father Patrick Lawson, who has described the church as a “big mafia” which is seeking to “destroy him,” is understood to have been issued a decree of removal by Bishop John Cunningham last week.
Fr Lawson claims that as a seminarian, he was abused in 1996 by Father Paul Moore, a parish priest, at St Quivox Church in Prestwick. He has also said that the church has failed to deal appropriately with his complaint over the intervening 17 years.
The allegations strike yet another blow to the church’s credibility as it seeks to move on from the scandal surrounding Cardinal Keith O’Brien and decades of abuse in the Catholic boarding school, Fort Augustus Abbey.
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