AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser
A former Melbourne archbishop feared the reach of Roman canon law and being left with egg on his face if the Vatican overturned a priest’s removal, the child abuse royal commission has heard.
The commission has heard Archbishop Frank Little failed to remove a number of pedophile priests, which former vicar-general and auxiliary bishop Hilton Deakin believes was partly due to his fears about Rome.
The 1974-1996 archbishop, who died in 2008, feared the Vatican authorities would find in a priest’s favour on appeal to Rome, Bishop Deakin said.
“I think the archbishop was very much motivated and governed by his own problem about Roman law, about Roman authority, about dismissing a priest and having him come back and then finding egg all over his face and that sort of stuff,” he said on Friday.
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