(AUSTRALIA)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
September 24, 2025
“Information given by the complainant … was inconsistent with other evidence obtained.”
An Australian auxiliary bishop returned to public ministry Wednesday, after an investigation concluded that an abuse allegation against him was “not sustained.”
Bishop Richard Umbers of the Sydney archdiocese had withdrawn from public ministry in early July, as an independent third-party investigation began into a civil claim of past abuse. Umbers denied the allegation “emphatically.”
An email obtained by The Pillar informed archdiocesan employees Sept. 24 that “an independent investigation has now concluded and returned a finding that the allegation made was ‘not sustained.’”
“The report from the independent investigator highlighted information given by the complainant that was inconsistent with other evidence obtained and therefore, the investigator could not be satisfied that the alleged conduct occurred,” explained the email, sent by archdiocesan vicar general Fr. Samuel Lynch.
“Accordingly, Bishop Umbers will now return to public ministry, and to the office,” Lynch wrote.
Umbers, a member of Opus Dei who was appointed as a Sydney auxiliary bishop in 2016, is known throughout the English-speaking world for his online presence, which has earned the 54-year-old the nickname “the meme bishop.”
Umbers was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1971. He trained for the priesthood at an Opus Dei seminary in Rome and studied at the city’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. He was ordained a priest in 2002 at Spain’s Torreciudad shrine.
Following his episcopal ordination in 2016, he represented Australia and New Zealand’s bishops at the International Eucharistic Congresses in Budapest in 2021 and Quito in 2024. He was granted Australian citizenship in April 2024.
When he was accused of abuse in early July, the Sydney archdiocese said that “in conformity with the archdiocesan protocol for managing safeguarding complaints and relevant legislation,” Umbers had “agreed to stand aside from public ministry while this allegation is investigated.”
The archdiocese confirmed that it had notified civil authorities about the claim, and noted that the New South Wales Police Force, which is responsible for law enforcement in Sydney, had confirmed there was no active investigation into the allegation.
An abuse crisis has overshadowed the Catholic Church in Australia for decades, gaining public visibility in the 1990s.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which operated from 2013 to 2017, scrutinized the handling of abuse cases by the Catholic Church in Australia, offering detailed recommendations to the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
The commission’s other recommendations included the creation of a single national redress scheme, which was established in 2018.
If the body concludes there is a reasonable likelihood that the applicant is eligible for redress, it can offer the applicant counseling, a direct response from an institution, such as a church or school, and a payment. The National Redress Scheme can provide a maximum redress payment of 150,000 Australian dollars (around $98,000).
The abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in Australia has included high-profile legal cases.
Retired Bishop Christopher Saunders, who led the Diocese of Broome in Western Australia from 1995 to 2021, is currently facing sexual abuse and assault charges. He pleaded not guilty in September 2024 to 19 abuse charges.
Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, was convicted in 2018 of sexual abuse, but the conviction was overturned in 2020 by the High Court of Australia, after he had spent nearly two years in prison. Pell died in 2023, at the age of 81.