AUSTRALIA
WA Today
June 22, 2014
Ross Peake
Senior reporter for The Canberra Times
A sacked Catholic bishop will tell a Canberra audience this week he was treated unfairly by Pope Benedict.
“I was deprived of natural justice as I was in no way able to appeal the judgments or decisions that were made,” Bill Morris says.
He was forced out of his position in Toowoomba after a group of conservative “temple police” parishioners complained directly to the Vatican about his preaching which included discussion about ordaining women and married men.
He has written a book about his experience – Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three – but says he has no bitterness.
Instead he has learnt to “breathe underwater”.
“That’s the freedom to be able to move with life in such a way that you can absorb the various difficulties, the good things, the bad things and all the time with a great respect for everything around you,” he said.
The book says he told Pope Benedict XVI in a personal meeting of a sex abuse case at a Toowoomba school but the Pope dismissed the bishop’s request to remain at his post to deal with it.
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