AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By IAN KIRKWOOD July 25, 2013
FATHER Brian Lucas began his second day in the witness box in Newcastle confirming he’d had to supply more documents about his involvement in dealing with paedophile priests to the Special Commission of Inquiry.
He finished the day by rejecting a suggestion from victims’ counsel Maria Gerace that his evidence was ‘‘not true’’.
Ms Gerace said the only thing Father Lucas could recall for the commission about serial paedophile the late Denis McAlinden – that his victims did not want to go to the police – was the one thing that would stop Father Lucas being charged with concealing a crime.
In between, the evidence traversed such diverse areas as the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete – a New Mexico-based ministry that specialises in ministering to troubled priests, including paedophiles – and the failure of a Catholic ethicist, Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, to convince the Church to have paedophile allegations against priests automatically reported to police from as early as 1990.
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