AUSTRALIA
The Age
April 14, 2016 –
Henrietta Cook
Education Reporter at The Age
A Catholic priest has offended parents at a Malvern East school by comparing paedophile priests to adulterous women in a school newsletter.
St Mary’s Primary School parish priest Father Bill Edebohls also took aim at lawyers and the media for not showing enough mercy during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.
He said he was concerned the Royal Commission would not give victims an opportunity to heal.
“Why? Because both the media and the lawyers, like the baying crowd of men in the gospel ready to throw stones, don’t understand the need for a justice that is drenched in mercy.”
The statements were printed in the school’s March newsletter and delivered at the St Mary’s church in East Malvern.
“Maybe to get the real drama and effect of the story we ought to replace the adulterous woman with a paedophile priest,” he wrote, after recounting the gospel tale of Jesus showing mercy towards an adulterous woman, telling the baying mob “he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.