AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 19, 2015

Chris McGillion

Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide is not the Pope and he is not Cardinal George Pell. People need to remember this when digesting the news that he has been charged by NSW Police with concealing child sexual abuse while a priest in the Hunter region in the 1970s.

This is big news but not quite as big as many seem to be assuming and not for the same reasons.

Media coverage of the action against Archbishop Wilson has emphasised that he is the most senior Catholic prelate to have been charged by civil authorities in connection with child abuse anywhere in the world. That may be so but he is not the only senior Catholic prelate to have been hauled before the civil courts. In September 2012, for instance, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph in the US state…