AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 30 April 2014)
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 and a parish in Queensland in the 1970s. Half a century later, on 30 April 2014, aged 81, he was jailed for child-sex crimes committed at the Victorian school in the 1960s.
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).
St Vincent’s College, Bendigo, was established in 1955 and was staffed by the Vincentian order. In 1977, it was taken over by the Marist Brothers. In 1983 this school then became part of Bendigo Catholic College.
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.
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