Bishop knew about abuse monk sent to Scotland
with whom he was photographed at a celebration at Fort Augustus Abbey, in Inverness-shire, in 1997.
It has been previously reported White was sent there in 1993.
In 2012, White was jailed for five years after being convicted of sexually abusing two boys in the 1980s at Downside, one of Britain’s oldest Roman Catholic boarding schools – run by lay staff and Benedictine monks f rom Downside Abbey in Somerset.
Yesterday, Rt Rev Gilbert, 67, then Abbot of Pluscarden in Moray, told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI): ‘I was aware he had been sent to Fort Augustus from his home monastery because of allegations against him at that time.’ He added: ‘I think what happened was that I had been informed, possibly by the Abbot of Downside, that he was being sent there.’
Asked if he knew why, the cleric, who is president of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, said: ‘It was said that there was a reason it was not a good idea for him to be at the school at his own monastery.’
The bishop said: ‘I think he was found guilty and that was lamentable. It must have been thought that this was a safe place to send him because there was not a school.’
The SCAI is hearing evidence on abuse allegations at Fort Augustus school, run by Benedictine monks before its closure in 1993.
The bishop added: ‘The hope we all have is that the children of today and in years to come will not have to endure some of the dreadful things that they did endure.
‘One hopes that this will help certain survivors, the acknowledgment of what happened to them.’
Also yesterday, giving evidence by video-link, a former teacher at Fort Augustus Abbey School in the 1970s and 1980s denied claims he had drawn blood when belting a pupil and had broken another’s knuckle.
The former monk, who is in his 80s and cannot be named for legal reasons, told the hearing in Edinburgh corporal punishment was ‘ very much part of the regime but the regime was benign really, it was for the good of the pupils’.
The inquiry continues.