AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
January 6, 2020
By Joanne McCarthy
ARCHBISHOP Philip Wilson is being treated for bowel cancer only months after release of a highly critical report about his handling of child sex allegations about Hunter priests Jim Fletcher and Denis McAlinden.
The retired Catholic archbishop and former Maitland-Newcastle priest will not be responding to the report, which Fletcher victim Peter Creigh described as a “vindication”, after the archbishop in 2018 successfully appealed his landmark conviction for concealing Fletcher’s crimes.
Commissioner Margaret Cunneen’s findings that Philip Wilson’s evidence was “improbable”, “implausible” and “unsatisfactory”, and that he should have reported serious allegations about McAlinden to police in 1987, showed Philip Wilson had “failed as a moral leader”, Mr Creigh said.
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