AUSTRALIA
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By Rebekah Ison, AAP Updated November 17, 2016
A former Newcastle bishop says the Anglican Church’s morality has been compromised by child sex scandals and it should play no part in decisions to defrock priests.
Bishop Brian Farran on Thursday testified that he thought the church’s professional standards process was too “in-house”” and that decisions would be better made by an independent statutory body.
“I think really the morality of the church has been compromised,” he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
“There has to be absolute transparency and it needs to move out … of the church and into a body like that.”
Bishop Farran has told the royal commission he felt that a group of influential parishioners were out to get him during the professional standards process that led to the defrocking of influential priest Graeme Lawrence in 2012.
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