AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 14 April 2014)
Research by Broken Rites has demonstrated how Catholic Church leaders kept quiet about a certain Australian priest, “Father F”, for THIRTY years until the matter was finally revealed by the media (not by the church) in 2012. Church leaders now need to explain why they remained silent for so long.
Father F spent his priestly career in New South Wales. The Catholic Church in New South Wales is divided into eleven dioceses, with each diocese being responsible for recruiting its priests and assigning them to various parishes or other postings. Father F belonged to the Armidale diocese (comprising two dozen parishes) in northern New South Wales, extending along the New England Highway to the Queensland border.
Father F’s first parish (from November 1981 to about April 1984) was the town of Moree (St Francis Xavier parish), where he assisted the Parish Priest, Monsignor Frank Ryan. Thus, Father F’s first full year in Moree was 1982 — and this is when the 30-year silence began.
Ten years later, in 1993, the newly-established Broken Rites victim support group announced its Australia-wide telephone hotline. One of the first incoming calls was from a former altar boy of Father F at Moree, recalling certain things that allegedly happened in this parish in 1982-84. Soon, Broken Rites had similar phone chats with other Moree families.
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