AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Vatican always sided with priests in abuse cases, archbishop says
JUNE 25, 2014
Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney
THE Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide has said the Vatican actively prevented bishops taking action against abusive priests during the late 1990s, and he considered appealing to the Pope or resigning his position over one such case.
Giving evidence this morning to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Philip Wilson said the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Clergy “always came down on the side of the priests” accused of child sex abuse.
“There was a phenomenon going on where bishops particularly in the US were trying to deal with these cases involving abuse and the Congregation for the Clergy consistently made things difficult for them in trying to do that,” Archbishop Wilson said.
“The Congregation for the Clergy always came down on the side of the priests and the instructions they gave to the bishops were (that) what they had done had to be put aside and the priest allowed back into ministry,” he said.
The commission is investigating the case of one allegedly abusive priest, John Gerard Nestor, who Archbishop Wilson barred from working publicly during his previous appointment as bishop of the Wollongong Diocese in NSW.
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