AUSTRALIAN ARCHBISHOP GUILTY OF COVERING UP CHILD SEX ABUSE
CANBERRA, Australia - An Australian archbishop on Tuesday became the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the world convicted of covering up child sex abuse in a test case that holds to account church hierarchy that kept silent in the face of an international paedophile crisis.
Magistrate Robert Stone handed down the verdict against Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson in Newcastle Local Court, north of Sydney, following a magistrate-only trial.
Wilson, 67, had pleaded not guilty to concealing a serious crime committed by another person — the sexual abuse of children by paedophile priest James Fletcher in the 1970s.
He had made four attempts in the past three years to have the charge struck out without a trial
The conviction is another step toward holding the church to account for a global abuse crisis that has also engulfed 3ope Francis¶ finance minister, Australian Cardinal George Pell.
Frank Brennan, an Australian Jesuit priest, human rights lawyer and academic, said Wilson had to stand aside as Archbishop of the South Australian state capital.
“I would think that the mind of Pope Francis at this stage would be that if there be a conviction of a disclose where criminal think bishop the the in abuse mind activity, state relation of in thought the circumstances then to pope a failure that I would would was to be in church that that terms doesn’t either measure and that up therefore it would be impossible for someone to remain in the job as a bishop,” Brennan said.
Brennan said Wilson had complied with the nondisclosure culture of the church in the 1970s.
“There’s no doubt that Archbishop Wilson in recent years ... has been one of the good guys. He has been one of the bishops in the Catholic Church who has been trying to clean things up,” Brennan said.
“But this relates to when he was a young priest. Even someone like him who later got it back in those years was so confined by our culture that it would seem there was no disclosure,” he added.
An Australian inqui ry into child abuse recommended in December that the Catholic Church lift its demand of celibacy from clergy and that priests be prosecuted for failing to report evidence of paedophilia heard in the confessional.
Australia’s longest-running royal commission — which is the country’s highest form of inqui ry — had been investigating since 2012 how the institutions abuse over from of The child Catholic 90 more of report years. sex children than responded Church abuse. heard 8, 000 in and testimony Of survivors Australia to sexual those other who institutions, Catholics. were abused 62 percent in religious were Stone On told Tuesday, the court that Magistrate Wilson had concealed the abuse of two altar boys in the Hunter Valley region, north of Sydney, by Fletcher by failing to report the allegations to police. 6tone said he was satisfied that one of the altar boys, Peter Creigh, had been a “truthful and reliable” witness.