Church Paid Pension after Priest Sent to UK

By Dan Box
The Australian
July 5, 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/church-paid-pension-after-priest-sent-to-uk/story-fngburq5-1226674538656

[Letters presented to the Special Commission of Inquiry - Newcastle Herald]

THE Catholic church continued to provide a pension to a pedophile priest after agreeing he would retire to England rather than have his victims go to the police, an inquiry has heard.

The arrangement is revealed in a series of letters tendered to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, which also detail how the priest, Denis McAlinden, attempted to manipulate his superiors' response to his crimes.

In one 1993 letter sent to the church's Sick Clergy Fund, the late bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, Leo Clarke, stated that "Fr D McAlinden has retired from active priestly duty" and is living in Skegness. He should receive $12,158 per year, Clarke wrote, more than the minimum stipend paid to a parish priest.

In a May 1995 letter, Clarke said McAlinden had admitted to child abuse and "an agreement was reached by which Fr Denis was to return to England and . . . not to act as a priest".

The letter shows that Clarke subsequently discovered the priest had in fact travelled to The Philippines and was again working in the church.

One of McAlinden's victims had contacted the bishop as a result. "She and her family are angry . . . that Fr Denis is again active in ministry," Clarke wrote.

McAlinden's correspondence reveals how he attempted to manipulate his superiors and resist their attempts to deal with repeated allegations he was abusing young girls.

In the earliest of these letters, sent in 1959, McAlinden wrote to his then bishop, John Toohey, asking to be sent on missionary work, despite the bishop having received at least one report of such abuse. "It seems a shame that hundreds of thousands of people are just clamouring for the Faith in Africa and are deprived through a shortage of priests. In this way, I feel I could still serve the diocese," he wrote.

Decades later, after the church attempted to defrock him, McAlinden wrote to Toohey and Clarke's successor, Michael Malone, saying the process was motivated in part by a colleague's "animosity towards him".

He also dismisses one alleged victim, saying the woman "has since divorced her husband . . . having failed to bring up her children in the Catholic faith."

There was no reason to stop him working as a priest, McAlinden suggested, as long as his victims and their families were not aware he was doing so.

McAlinden died in 2005, before he could be charged. Bishop Malone is due to give evidence next week.