AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 12 November 2013)
A court has heard how one of Australia’s most prominent Catholic archbishops, Most Reverend Sir Frank Little (of Melbourne), covered up the crimes of a priest (Father Russell Vears). A parent notified Archbishop Little about the crimes, but the church authorities managed to conceal the crimes from the police until one of the victims contacted the police three decades years later, in 2011.
Sir Frank Little was the archbishop of Melbourne (one of the largest Catholic dioceses in Australia) from 1974 to 1996 (when he was succeeded by Archbishop George Pell).
Father Russell Robert Vears (ordained in 1975) was protected by the Melbourne diocese until the 1980s. He later ceased working in parishes and changed his surname to Walker. However, although he no longer has a parish now, Vears/Walker still has not been officially stripped of his priesthood.
Broken Rites began doing research about Vears in 1998. (See a sub-heading near the end of this article.)
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