KINGSTON (JAMAICA)
The Gleaner
March 17, 2019
By Nadine Wilson-Harris
The banning from priestly ministry of former Bishop of Mandeville Gordon Bennett for sexual harassment has come as a shocker for the local Catholic Church, but Archbishop Emeritus of Kingston, the Reverend Charles Dufour, has questioned whether ill-health might have contributed to his actions.
“We are grieved that a man we knew to be a good man apparently is alleged to have engaged in such behaviour. Having known that his character had been deeply affected by his depression and stroke, one wonders how much this contributed to his actions,” Dufour said in a statement to the press released on Saturday afternoon.
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori has announced ministerial restrictions for Bishop Bennett and Bishop Michael Bransfield, who resigned from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston last year. Bishop Bransfield was accused of sexually harassing adults and committing financial improprieties.
According to a story carried in The Associated Press on Monday, Bennett served in Baltimore from 1998 until 2004, when he was appointed Bishop of Mandeville in Jamaica. He resigned in August 2006, a few months after the archdiocese learnt of an allegation of his sexual harassment of a young adult in Jamaica.
But Dufour said he was told at the time that Bishop Bennett’s resignation was due to ill-health.
“I learned – like everybody else when Archbishop Lori of Baltimore released his statement – that there were also other reasons linked to his departure: that of an unfortunate alleged case of sexual harassment of an adult,” he said.
“As the former Archbishop of Kingston and Bishop of Montego Bay and as the present apostolic administrator of Mandeville, I can only state how saddened and shocked we all are at learning of this event, which was reported to have taken place 13 years ago,” Reverend Dufour stated.
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.