AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher
The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese has finally been forced to admit that Father Anthony Bongiorno committed sexual crimes against children during his 30 years working in Melbourne parishes. Anthony Salvatore Bongiorno began training for the priesthood about 1960, aged 25, in the same trainee group as George Pell and Denis Hart, both of whom eventually became archbishops of Melbourne. In 1994, Pell (then an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne) officiated at a requiem mass for Bongiorno’s brother Sam. Bongiorno’s crimes were covered up until the mid-1990s.
A Melbourne man, “Rex”, has been awarded compensation from the Victorian Government’s Crimes Compensation Tribunal for sexual crimes committed upon him by Father Bongiorno. The tribunal, in 1997, accepted evidence that Father Bongiorno had indecently assaulted the boy repeatedly at St Ambrose’s parish in Sydney Road, Brunswick beginning in 1981-82. The compensation was for the damage that this church-related abuse caused to the victim’s adolescent development.
Bongiorno has also been investigated by the commissioner on sexual abuse for on the Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese, Peter O’Callaghan QC. Mr O’Callaghan accepted that Bongiorno had committed child-sex abuse while at Brunswick.
Rex’s story
Acccording to legal depositions, Rex testified that in 1981 Father Tony Bongiorno invited him to stay overnight at the Brunswick presbytery, where he shared the priest’s bed. Bongiorno touched the boy’s genitals in the bedroom and again later while showering with the boy. This genital touching continued regularly for years.
In 1985, Rex told a social worker about Bongiorno’s sexual abuse. When the Catholic diocesan office heard the complaint, it asked another priest, Father O (who was a close friend of Bongiorno from seminary days) to “investigate”. Bongiorno denied the allegation and Father O reported this orally to the archdiocese, which dropped the matter.
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