AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
October 6, 2014
Rory Callinan
Investigative journalist
A Catholic priest who, as a religious brother, is alleged to have abused boys in the 1960s in Australia and has been allowed to continue ministering in Papua New Guinea has not had a valid visa for the country for four years, a senior church administrator says.
Father Roger Mount has also ignored official requests to leave his parish at Sogeri near the Kokoda Track about 45 kilometres north-east of Port Moresby since 2011.
However, Port Moresby officials have said Fr Mount will be removed from the parish by Thursday.
The order to leave the parish came after Fairfax contacted the Port Moresby diocese to reveal a second alleged Australian victim of Fr Mount had come forward to publicly express outrage over the church’s failure to launch any investigation into the allegations.
Over the past two decades the Catholic St John of God Order in Australia which employed Roger Mount as a brother when the alleged abuse occurred has paid more than $100,000 to his alleged victims and apologised.
Yet the then Brother Mount, who moved to Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and became a priest, has never faced any official inquiry over the allegations, which involved boys as young as 11 and 12 at homes run by the order.
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