AUSTRALIA
7 News
Megan Neil
December 4, 2015
It will take generations to restore the trust destroyed by priests who sexually abused children, the former second-in-charge of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese predicts.
Former vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors says church leaders completely failed to deal with pedophile priests as they tried to protect the church.
“There has been a terrible abuse of the trust that people gave implicitly to priests,” Bishop Connors told the child abuse royal commission.
“That trust was sacred but it was destroyed by priests, the way they acted.
“It will take generations for that trust to be restored.”
Bishop Connors, the vicar-general from 1976 to 1987, has admitted he should have done more after a teenage boy was abused by Fr Wilfred “Bill” Baker in 1978.
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