AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)
02 December 2015
by Mark Brolly
Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne (pictured) has acknowledged that there was “a paralysis” and “a complete failure of process” in dealing with sexual abuse allegations under one of his predecessors, Archbishop Sir Frank Little.
But he has excused his immediate predecessor, Cardinal George Pell, who governed the Melbourne church from 1996-2001 before his transfer to Sydney.
Archbishop Hart gave evidence over two days to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about the Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations against six priests, particularly the late Fr Peter Searson, parish priest of Holy Family in Doveton, a working class suburb of Melbourne with a majority immigrant population, in the 1980s and 90s.
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