Accuser Denies Rorting Church Funds, by Martin Daly, Canberra Times, September 16, 2011

Accuser Denies Rorting Church Funds

By Martin Daly
Canberra Times
September 16, 2011

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/national/national/general/accuser-denies-rorting-church-funds/2294088.aspx

Archbishop John Hepworth at his home in Adelaide yesterday. Photo: David Mariuz

The Adelaide-based archbishop who has rocked the Catholic Church with a series of sex abuse allegations against several priests has been accused of financial mismanagement in parishes in Victoria and South Australia.

Archbishop John Hepworth openly discusses the allegations, including charges he faced in a Ballarat court for allegedly misappropriating Anglican parish funds.

But he claims his detractors are using the allegations to smear him as he battles the Archdiocese of Adelaide for action against one of three priests who allegedly abused him sexually more than 40 years ago.

Archbishop Hepworth claims he left the Catholic priesthood and fled Australia in fear and disgust to London after years of sexual abuse, including rape, in Adelaide, at several locations in Victoria, and in Europe.

But some in the Adelaide Catholic Archdiocese allege the real reason he left was because of financial irregularities at Glenelg, one of Adelaide's biggest and wealthiest parishes where he was administrator between January and November 1974.

The archbishop, now leader of the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion, has known about the Glenelg allegations since they first surfaced decades ago and has vigorously denied them.

Archbishop Hepworth said he had faced court in Ballarat about 30 years ago charged with misappropriating $1200 from the Anglican parish of Sebastopol to pay for his son's baptism party.

''My marriage was breaking up. I was really gone to pieces. And yes, there was a court case. I pleaded not guilty. The magistrate refused to find any verdict. And that was the end of it,'' he said.

''I was trying to stop the marriage breaking up. My then wife wanted a big party and I could not afford it.

''The [Anglican] diocese brought [the charge] because I had wrongly used ... [a parish account] and regretted it afterwards ... I had paid an account intending to pay it back. It was as common as that. And it was wrong.''

The registrar of the Anglican diocese of Ballarat, Robin Mitchell, said Archbishop Hepworth had left more than 30 years ago and there was nobody around who remembered what happened back then.

Archbishop Hepworth said that the Glenelg allegations were ''a continued repetition of the stuff used to blackmail me''.

He said that the Anglican church, before he joined it, had sent prominent Adelaide QC, Robin Millhouse, to Auxiliary Bishop Philip Kennedy at the Adelaide Catholic Archdiocese to find out what Hepworth had allegedly done at Glenelg and to ask for a commendation.

The Millhouse report, given to Fairfax by Archbishop Hepworth, says, ''After some talk he told me that at Glenelg he [Archbishop Hepworth] had taken school fees and given receipts in discarded but only partly used receipt books and then not accounted for the money.''

Mr Millhouse told the Bishop that Hepworth wanted charges preferred so he could clear himself.

''Bishop Kennedy said that it was not in Hepworth's best interest that this should come out and would be bad for the Church.''

Bishop Kennedy, according to the Millhouse 1976 letter, said he did not know how much money was involved but that even $10 would be enough to convict Archbishop Hepworth. He later mentioned ''larceny as a servant'' as a possible charge.

The bishop under questioning from Mr Millhouse, who was not impressed by answers and by a lack of responses to some questions, said the alleged irregularities were suspected before Archbishop Hepworth had left the parish and that ''there was plenty of evidence to convict him''.

But almost a year earlier, the Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese, Monsignor Thomas Horgan, gave a reference for Archbishop Hepworth, which said that to his knowledge over seven years, Archbishop Hepworth had carried out his duties at three parishes, including Glenelg, with ''personal zeal and efficiency. He made a valuable contribution in matters liturgical to the archdiocese''.