AUSTRALIA
Wilson accused on television of covering up sexual abuse
THE PRESIDENT of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Philip Wilson, has been accused of covering up sexual abuse by fellow priests while he was a senior clergyman in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, north of Sydney, writes Mark Brolly. The allegations against the Archbishop of Adelaide were among a flurry of claims that emerged on Monday of abuse, inaction or cover-up by Australian churchmen in three dioceses. Archbishop Wilson was accused of failing to report sexual abuse by priests against children in the 1970s and 1980s, including one case where a fellow resident of the bishop’s house in Maitland, Fr James Fletcher, allegedly repeatedly sexually abused Peter Gogarty, then 12, in Fr Fletcher’s upstairs bedroom. The allegations were made in an interview with Mr Gogarty, now a businessman, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation programme Latelineon Monday night. Mr Gogarty said the abuse continued even after the then bishop, the late Bishop Leo Clarke, banned the boy from the house. Mr Gogarty said he regularly saw the then Fr Wilson downstairs in the house, either before or after the assaults. In 2004, Fr Fletcher, who died in jail four years ago, was convicted of committing 24 offences involving four victims. A spokeswoman for Archbishop Wilson said the allegations against him “are completely without basis”. Earlier on Monday, The Age newspaper in
Melbourne and The Sydney Morning
Herald published allegations that two priests continued to exercise their ministry while being investigated for sexual abuse. The papers reported that a priest in the New South Wales Diocese of Broken Bay, Fr Finian Egan, was praised at a Mass last year on his Golden Jubilee of ordination despite allegations of abuse of girls in the 1980s. Bishop David Walker of Broken Bay said that claims that the Church failed to act were “grossly inaccurate”. The two newspapers also reported that a Melbourne priest, Fr Patrick Maye, twice celebrated the annual Mass for Victoria’s Irish community, despite being banned from acting as a priest after church investigators found that he had abused women. ■Last week, at the opening Mass of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania, Bishop Peter Ingham of Wollongong said the dismissiveness in the West of all religion, and of Christianity in particular, “could be quite aptly described as the new modern method of martyrdom … coming in the form of ridicule, derision and character assassination”.
36 | THE TABLET | 22 May 2010
UNITED STATES
Priest who barred lesbian’s son from school overruled
Michael Sean Winters
In Washington
THE ARCHDIOCESEof Boston has stepped in to help a boy whose mother is in a lesbian relationship, after one of its priests denied the child a place at a local parish school. The archdiocese’s superintendent of schools, Mary Grassa O’Neil, said the arch- diocese would find the child a place at another Catholic school, adding: “The archdiocese does not prohibit children of same-sex parents from attending Catholic schools. We will work in the coming weeks to develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings.” Ms O’Neil contacted the parents and said
they were “gracious and appreciative” of the archdiocese’s offer of help finding a different Catholic school for their son. The decision by the archdiocese, which was approved by Boston’s Cardinal Archbishop Sean O’Malley, marked a departure from the direction set in March by the Archdiocese of Denver. There, Archbishop Charles Chaput
defended the decision of a local priest to remove a girl whose mother was in a lesbian relationship from the parochial school. In a column in his archdiocesan newspaper, Archbishop Chaput wrote: “If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible.” Critics of the deci- sion pointed out that the archdiocese did not prevent the children of divorced and remarried parents from attending Catholic schools. Meanwhile the Boston Archdiocese received
news that the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura had sided with it in a suit brought by lay people who protested against various parish closures made in 2004. At the time, 83 parishes were closed and 10 of those parishes filed a canon law suit to protest against the archdiocese’s decision. Critics of the archdiocese said that the parishes were closed to fund a settlement in the clergy sex-abuse scandal, but the funds for the settlement actually came from the sale of the archbishop’s residence.
COLOMBIA
Cardinal defends opposition Green candidate
THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP of the
Colombian capital, Bogotá, Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Sáenz, has vouched for the honesty of the opposition Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus ahead of presidential elec- tions on 30 May, writes Jon Stibbs. Mr Mockus has been rumoured to be an atheist, but Cardinal Rubiano rejected the idea. “I have known him for some time; I know him as a honest person, not simply from what I have heard but I have had conversa- tions with him; we have also carried out activities together,” he said. Mr Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, stressed his Catholic faith and his “excellent relations” with the Church. He said he did not attend Mass but added: “It is one thing
■ CANADA: An estimated 15,000 demon- strators took to the streets on 13 May for Canada’s largest ever annual March for Life on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, writes Peter Kavanagh. The Cardinal Archbishop of Quebec, Marc Ouellet, and Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast led the march. Cardinal Ouellet praised Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for an anti- abortion initiative he is to champion at the G8 summit next month in Ontario, but called on him to take a similar stance within Canada. Mr Harper is seeking to exclude funding for
not to go to Mass and another to be an atheist.” The joint front-runner, the ruling Partido de la U nominee and current defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, has sought to gain polit- ical capital from the rumours by stressing his own faith. Mr Santos is defence minister and has been credited with waging a successful military campaign against left-wing guerrillas. The Church, however, has called for a break with the status quo in relation to the 45-year- old conflict. Addressing all the candidates, the Church’s National Reconciliation Commission said: “We propose that the pres- idential candidates make a commitment to seek peaceful solutions to the conflict, which has left hundreds of thousands of dead and displaced persons in Colombia.”
abortion from a tabled maternal-health ini- tiative at the summit. “We support this stance of the Government not to finance abortion in countries of the Third World,” he said. “But we would like some more courage, to do more in Canada in defence of the unborn.” Canada’s laws restricting abortion were struck down in 1988 when the Supreme Court ruled they were contrary to the rights of women. The Conservative Government, which has long insisted it has no intention of reopen- ing the abortion debate in Canada, distanced itself from the cardinal’s remarks.
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