Former Newcastle bishop Michael Malone admits church ‘cover-up’

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

IAN KIRKWOOD
1 Sep 2016

THE Royal Commission has heard that bishop Michael Malone intervened to stop a priest later convicted for paedophilia being appointed as principal of St Francis Xavier College in 1997.

Although he did this, he told the commission he did not report the priest, Brother Dominic, to the police, and left it to others to deal with.

He also defended alerting his colleague Brother Michael Hill about two other suspect priests, brother Patrick and brother Romuald, and describing their conduct as unlikely to be “criminal”.

He told the commission he said this because he thought their actions were more “touchy feely” than “penetration or masturbation publicly or anything of that nature”.

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.