AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 10 January 2016)

Broken Rites research has discovered how an Australian Catholic leader (Bishop William Brennan) covered up allegations of clergy sex-abuse in his diocese. Police charged one of Brennan’s priests (Father Bernard Connell) with allegedly abusing two boys in different parishes but Bishop Brennan hired an expert legal team to defeat the charges. One of these victims then asked Bishop Brennan for help but the bishop shunned him. The bishop’s main aim was protecting the church’s holy image, instead of protecting children.

The accused priest, Father Bernard M. Connell, belonged to the Wagga Wagga diocese in southern New South Wales. This diocese extends southward to Albury on the Victorian border. This is one of the eleven dioceses into which the state of New South Wales is divided. Bishop Brennan was in charge of the Wagga Wagga diocese from…