Paedophile Priest James Fletcher Was Buried with Honours
By Gemma Jones
THE Catholic church honoured a paedophile priest - who died in jail - with a marble headstone which listed his achievements. One of James Patrick Fletcher's victims yesterday said the burial in the priests' section of Sandgate Cemetery near Newcastle was the "final insult". A brass plaque records the deviant's career as a priest. In death he kept his title of Reverend Father. A court found the 65-year-old had committed "a gross and inexcusable breach of trust" when he raped an altar boy, a crime for which he was sentenced to almost eight years prison, where he died in 2006. One victim, Peter Gogarty, yesterday said he was "distressed" Fletcher retained his title in death and was buried in the priests' section. "How can this man, a convicted paedophile, die and be buried in the priests' section of the cemetery? Fletcher should never have been buried as a priest," he said. "That was the ultimate insult to Fletcher's victims." A spokeswoman for the Catholic Church said some people under the Code of Canon Law "should be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals ... such as heretics and apostates and also those who are held to be manifest sinners. "Nevertheless, canon law commentators indicate that the presumption is in favour of giving someone a funeral and if a person considered to have been a manifest sinner were to have given some sign of repentance before death they are not to be denied a funeral."
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