AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury
By Annette Blackwell June 24, 2014
A Wollongong priest wasn’t fired until 20 years after complaints about him molesting young boys became known, and the Pope was the only one with the power to dismiss him from the priesthood, an inquiry has been told.
At a hearing in Sydney the royal commission into child sexual abuse is looking at how the Catholic Church under its own law – canon law – deals with priests and others against whom allegations have been made but no convictions obtained.
In particular, it is looking at the case of John Gerard Nestor, 50, who was a priest in the Wollongong diocese when he was charged in 1997 with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.
The priest admitted in his 1997 court case that he had slept on mattresses on a floor with the boy and his younger brother in July 1991, but he denied assaulting the boy.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, then a federal parliamentary secretary to the employment minister, told the court at the time ‘‘he (Nestor) was … a beacon of humanity at the seminary’’.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.