AUSTRALIA
The Australian
September 14, 2016
DAN BOX
Crime reporterSydney
@DanBox10
The Catholic bishop of Wagga Wagga allowed a pedophile priest to move into his parish despite knowing allegations of child abuse had been made against him, a royal commission has heard.
Bishop Gerard Hanna told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today that he was the administrator of a parish in Tamworth, northern NSW, when he was told to accept the priest, John Farrell, in 1984.
Farrell, who was jailed in May this year for dozens of child offences, had been moved from another parish after the church received allegations that he had been sexually abusing children.
“The bishop said ‘Oh, you know Gerry, it’s that usual thing. He was messing around with altar boys’,” Bishop Hanna said.
When asked what was meant by “the usual thing”, Bishop Hanna told the commission “It wasn’t unknown … that there were priests who used altar boys, that they were pedophiles in fact.”
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