AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY June 18, 2014
A HUNTER group has called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to show ‘‘Catholic leadership’’ after the Church’s response to an extraordinary broadside from former premier Barry O’Farrell over the Hunter’s damning history of child sexual abuse.
Mr O’Farrell accused Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright of ‘‘spin’’, and slammed former bishop Michael Malone and Australian Bishops Conference general secretary Brian Lucas for their ‘‘criminal inaction’’ over Hunter paedophile priest Denis McAlinden, in a speech to NSW Parliament on Tuesday night.
It came after the tabling of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report into NSW Police and Catholic Church handling of allegations involving McAlinden and a second Hunter paedophile priest, Jim Fletcher.
The failure of Father Lucas and Bishop Malone to report McAlinden to police from 1993 was ‘‘inexcusable and unacceptable in anyone, but I find it unbelievable, abominable and, frankly, un-Christian when it is found amongst so-called ‘men of the cloth’,’’ Mr O’Farrell said.
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