AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury
By KATE McILWAIN June 27, 2014
Wollongong Bishop Peter Ingham has told a public inquiry of his repeated attempts to stop an accused child molester from working as a priest while the Vatican stalled.
In the witness box at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Ingham said he was frustrated and disappointed at the length of time it took the church to stand down former priest John Nestor.
Mr Nestor was suspended from the ministry in 1997 after he was convicted, but later acquitted on appeal, over aggravated indecent assault charges of a 15-year-old altar boy.
When more complaints emerged about his behaviour towards boys at summer holiday camps, the diocese continued to pursue his dismissal.
Bishop Ingham began his tenure in Wollongong in 2001, amid an appeal to the church’s highest judicial authority, the Apostolic Signatura. This was launched by the Wollongong diocese after another church body – the powerful Congregation for the Clergy – had ruled Mr Nestor should be allowed to work as a priest despite the child abuse allegations.
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