Towards Healing did not have Vatican approval, child abuse inquiry told

The Guardian (UK)
June 25, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/towards-healing-did-not-have-vatican-approval

Archbishop Philip Wilson leaves the royal commission in Sydney.

Towards Healing, the process the Australian Catholic church used to deal with allegations of child sexual abuse, did not have Vatican approval, a royal commission has heard.

Archbishop Philip Wilson told the commission on Wednesday how a formal decree he made when he was bishop of Wollongong to stop a priest about whom there had been complaints, was nullified by a powerful Vatican body.

The archbishop is in the box for the second day explaining how he dealt with John Nestor, a priest who was defrocked by Pope Benedict in 2008.

Complaints about Nestor dated back to 1991.

In 1996 he was found guilty of indecent assault of a teenage altar boy but was acquitted on appeal in 1997.

The archbishop said he used the Towards Healing protocol – the internal process set up by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference – to have Nestor assessed after he was acquitted.

He wanted Nestor to go to a clinic for further assessment. Nestor refused and on 22 January 1998 he told Nestor: "You are to cease functioning publicly as a priest in any place until I give you permission to do so."

He said that within the Vatican, the body known as the Congregation for the Clergy was the most powerful, and it was known for finding in favour of priests who challenged decisions by their bishops.

Nestor appealed against his decree and the CFC found that the bishop's decree did not meet the requirements of canon law, which would have required that Nestor go through a penal church process.

The bishop was told that Towards Healing "norms are in conflict with the code [canon] or disregard the canonical norms of procedure".

Wilson said: "I think that the resource [appeal] that was taken to the Congregation for the Clergy had an element in it where they regarded Towards Healing as being a non-operative procedure because it hadn't received authorisation of the Holy See".

Wilson said he always saw the Towards Healing process running in conjunction with church law – canon law – because he knew that Nestor would "contest everything".

He had checked with respected canon lawyers to ensure that what he was doing was correct.

He told the commission there was confusion in the church at the time about what laws applied and it was little known among bishops worldwide and in Australia that there had been reforms to canon law.

"There was a great confusion among the doctors, the teachers, about what were the proper procedures not only in these [child abuse] cases but in others."

The hearing is continuing.