AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
December 3, 2015
Beau Donelly
The Catholic Church described paedophile priests working in parishes across Australia as ticking “time bombs”, damning minutes from a high-level meeting of top church officials reveals.
Minutes tendered to the child abuse royal commission from a 1992 special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said it was agreed there were “serious ‘time bombs’ ticking away in a number of dioceses” at the time.
The former second-in-charge of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, testified on Thursday that the reference applied not only to churches in Melbourne but also in other dioceses.
“The reference to time bombs can only be understood as a reference to dioceses where there were priests operating who had had serious allegations against them, or the church had accepted were sexual offenders,” senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, said.
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