AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
July 13, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
Not everyone laughed when Bishop Michael Malone joked in the witness box at the Newcastle sex abuse inquiry that he should have destroyed documents relating to criminal priests in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.
There was disgust in the public gallery, where victims of paedophile priests and their families have spent several weeks following the evidence on whether the Catholic Church and police covered up sex abuse allegations.
Counsel assisting the inquiry Julia Lonergan, SC, asked the bishop about Catholic canon law, which requires bishops to keep files on criminal cases involving priests at their dioceses secret, locked and closely guarded. He agreed the church law requires bishops each year to destroy documents where the guilty party has died or 10 years have passed since sentencing.
Asked whether he had followed these rules, Bishop Malone replied: ”No, I didn’t destroy any documents in my time as bishop.” Then he joked: ”Perhaps I should have.”
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