AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today continued its hearings concerning the Catholic Church’s scheme for dealings with victims, the “Towards Healing” process. It is concentrating on four victims, in two dioceses (Brisbane in Queensland Sate and Lismore in New South Wales State), and two religious orders.
[The enquiry has heard from the current bishop of Lismore, Geoffrey Hilton Jarrett. Some media reports referred to him as Geoffrey Hilton. Fr. Geoffrey Hilton was a Catholic Priest in the U.K., who recently had child sexual abuse claims against him dropped. Fr. Hilton had attracted attention because he had been a chaplain to the British Olympic Team at the London Olympics.]
Bishop Jarrett is more than a year past the mandatory retirement age of 75 imposed by the Catholic Church. Maybe, no one wants to take over the mess that is the Lismore diocese.
Jarrett told the enquiry that he had, in 2011, referred one of his priests to the Vatican because the priest had been “telling people he knew of a place in Thailand where under age people were available to foreign visitors.” (See previous postings on S.E.Asian “orphanages”) He had not yet heard back from the Vatican, but said this was to be expected since the Vatican was being swamped with such complaints.
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