AUSTRALIA
The Age
February 10, 2016
Timna Jacks
Education Reporter
More than 40 parents pulled their children out of mass at a Melbourne Catholic school on Wednesday in protest over an allegedly abusive priest.
Parents at St John Vianney’s Primary School in Parkdale are calling for the resignation of parish priest Father John Walshe.
Father Walshe, who defended Cardinal George Pell at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has been accused of sexually abusing an 18-year-old seminarian in 1982.
The parents collected their children before mass at 11:30am, and dropped them back at school after 1pm.
Some parents took their children to other parishes instead – the St Patrick’s School parish in Mentone and Our Lady of Assumption parish in Cheltenham.
The parents’ protest comes a week after about 20 parents at Mentone’s St Patrick’s School – which is in the same parish – withdrew their children from weekly mass.
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