Premier: Pope should fire archbishop for hiding abuse

SYDNEY — Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Thursday that Pope Francis should fire an Australian archbishop who is the highestranking Catholic official in the world to be found guilty of concealing sex crimes against children.

“He should have resigned, and the time has come for the pope to sack him,” Turnbull said of Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide.

Wilson, 67, was sentenced this month to 12 months in detention after being found guilty in May of hiding abuse by a priest, Jim Fletcher, in the state of New South Wales in the 1970s.

Turnbull, who converted to Catholicism in 2002, said he and other political leaders had already called on Wilson to resign.

“I think the time has come now for the ultimate authority in the church to take action and sack him,” he said.

While he has given up his duties, Wilson has refused to resign while he appeals his conviction. He is free on bail pending a decision next month on whether he is to serve his sentence in prison or under house arrest.

Wilson said he would offer his resignation to the pope only if his appeal were unsuccessful.

“I am conscious of calls for me to resign and have taken them very seriously,” he said on July 4, the day after his sentencing. “However, at this time, I am entitled to exercise my legal rights and to follow the due process of law. Since that process is not yet complete, I do not intend to resign at this time.”

Prominent members of Australia’s Catholic community have also called for Wilson to step down. But only the pope can compel him to do so, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said this month.

Last month, Turnbull said he would issue a formal apology in October to survivors of child sexual abuse, thousands of whom were targeted in Australian schools, religious organizations and other institutions. The government is also offering financial reparations.

The reparations are among the recommendations the government accepted from a royal commission report last year that identified 4,444 victims of abuse and at least 1,880 suspected abusers from 1980 to 2015. According to the report, more than 60 percent of survivors who told the commission they were abused in religious institutions were abused in a Catholic facility.