AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
July 12, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
Bishop Michael Malone admitted he was ”bumbling” in his first nine years of dealing with child sex abuse allegations against two priests in his Maitland-Newcastle diocese because he found ”the whole area … so distasteful” and ”very unpalatable”.
The bishop said it was not until 2004, nine years after he became bishop, that he had an ”epiphany” when an ombudsman’s report made it ”obvious that I was not adequately handling these matters”.
There were gasps and guffaws from the packed public gallery at Newcastle court on Thursday during Bishop Malone’s testimony at the state government inquiry into alleged police and church cover-ups of paedophile priest activity in the Hunter Valley.
He expressed regret for his actions several times and said he retired in 2011 because the matters he had to deal with had made him ”very tired”.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.