AUSTRALIA
WA Today
[Former priest alleges ‘system of abuse cover-ups’ – ABC Latline]
November 11, 2013
Dan Harrison
An Australian man removed from the priesthood for secretly marrying has been killed by typhoon Haiyan just weeks after becoming a father.
Kevin Lee, who made headlines worldwide in May last year when he was defrocked after revealing he had been married for more than a year, drowned after disappearing in rough surf off Samar Island in the Philippines.
Police found his body on Sunday morning, Australian time.
Mr Lee had been living with his Filipino wife Josefina in her home village, and recently celebrated the birth of a baby girl, Michelle.
The 49-year-old, a whistleblower on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, recently reflected on his blog that had he not broken his vow of celibacy, his daughter would not be alive.
”I have always believed that nothing happens without God’s divine permission,” he wrote.
The couple met in a Manila karaoke bar in 2011, when Mr Lee, then the priest at Padre Pio parish in Glenmore Park in Sydney’s west, was on a pilgrimage with other members of the church.
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