AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 25 February 2015)
In 1959-1962, Father James Patrick Jennings began his priestly career, ministering at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, New South Wales, followed by a church school in northern Victoria in 1963-68. Half a century later, on 24 February 2014, a Victorian jury convicted Jennings of committing child-sex crimes at the Victorian school.
The Victorian school was St Vincent’s College, which was then situated at Bendigo, 150 kilometres north of Melbourne. Both the Bathurst school and the Bendigo one were boarding schools, for boys only, and were owned by the Catholic order of Vincentian Fathers (this order is officially known as the Congregation of the Mission).
The Vincentians are an Australia-wide religious order, which has schools and parishes in several states. That is, the Vincentians are not confined to a particular diocese. Father Jim Jennings worked in Queensland as well as in New South Wales and Victoria.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.