SYDNEY: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday that Pope Francis must sack an Australian archbishop convicted of concealing child sex abuse.
In May, Archbishop Philip Wilson, 67, became the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of not disclosing to police abuse by another priest.
Wilson, who was sentenced to a year’s detention this month, has stepped aside as archbishop of Adelaide in South Australia state, but has not resigned, insisting he will do so only if he is unsuccessful in an appeal.
Turnbull, who has previously called on Wilson to resign, escalated his criticism of the archbishop remaining in office.
“He should have resigned and the time has come for the Pope to sack him,” Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. “I think the time has come now for the ultimate authority in the Church to take action and sack him.”
The archdiocese of Adelaide was not immediately available for comment.
The usual procedure is for a bishop to offer his resignation to the pope, but Wilson has said he will appeal the sentence and not resign unless he loses.
The Vatican had no comment on Turnbull’s remark, one of the sharpest interventions by a politician concerning the Catholic Church since former Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests in 2011.
That prompted the Vatican to recall its ambassador in Ireland for consultations.
Lawyers for Wilson, who maintained his innocence throughout his trial, had argued that he did not know priest James Fletcher had committed child sex abuse throughout the 1970s. The court was told that two victims, one an altar boy, told Wilson of the abuse in 1976.
Fletcher was found guilty in 2004 of nine counts of child sexual abuse and died in jail in 2006 after a stroke.
Wilson remains on bail while he is assessed by prison authorities for home detention, instead of jail.
Diagnosed this year with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Wilson is to face court again on August 11, for a ruling on whether he will be imprisoned or allowed to serve his sentence in home detention.
Accusations of sexual abuse cover-ups have continued to rock the Catholic Church years after perpetrators of sexual abuse started regularly appearing before the courts.
In May, all 34 bishops in Chile offered to resign over allegations of a cover-up of sexual abuse.
Australian PM calls on pope to fire archbishop
Australian PM calls on pope to fire archbishop
- The archbishop has long denied the charges and his legal team made four attempts to have the case thrown out
- One of the highest-ranking church officials to be convicted on the charge
Afghan man goes on trial over deadly Munich car-ramming
- The suspect, partially identified as Farhad N., 25, remained silent and did not offer a statement at the opening of the trial
- He faces two charges of murder and 44 of attempted murder
MUNICH: An Afghan man went on trial in Germany on Friday accused of ramming a car into a crowd in Munich last year, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and injuring dozens.
The suspect, partially identified as Farhad N., 25, remained silent and did not offer a statement at the opening of the trial, sitting in the dock wearing a green fur-lined hooded jacket.
He faces two charges of murder and 44 of attempted murder, with prosecutors saying he acted out of a “religious motivation” and expected to die in the attack.
The vehicle rampage in February 2025 was one of several deadly attacks linked to migrants which inflamed a heated debate on immigration ahead of a general election that month.
Farhad N. is accused of deliberately steering his car into a 1,400-strong trade union street rally in Munich on February 13.
The vehicle came to a halt after 23 meters (75 feet) “because its front wheels lost contact with the ground due to people lying in front of and underneath the car,” according to the charge sheet.
A 37-year-old woman and her young daughter were both hurled through the air for 10 meters and sustained severe head injuries, of which they died several days later.
Prosecutors have said Kabul-born Farhad N. “committed the act out of excessive religious motivation,” and that he had uttered the words “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is the greatest,” after the car rampage.
“He believed he was obliged to attack and kill randomly selected people in Germany in response to the suffering of Muslims in Islamic countries,” they said when he was charged in August.
However, he is not believed to have been part of any Islamist militant movement such as the Daesh group.
Farhad N. was examined by a psychiatrist after exhibiting “certain unusual behaviors” during pretrial detention, including a tic in which he sometimes twitches his head, a court spokesman said on Friday.
The preliminary psychiatric report concluded that he is criminally responsible, but the presiding judge has said that the issue could be considered during the proceedings, according to the spokesman.
The trial is scheduled to run for 38 days until the end of June.
- Spate of attacks -
Farhad N. arrived in Germany in 2016 as an unaccompanied teenager, having traveled overland at the height of the mass migrant influx to Europe.
His asylum request was rejected but he was spared deportation, found work with a series of jobs and was able to remain in the country.
Police said Farhad N. worked in security and was heavily engaged in fitness training and bodybuilding.
The Munich attack came a month after another Afghan man had carried out a knife attack on a kindergarten group that killed two people, including a two-year-old boy, in the city of Aschaffenburg.
The perpetrator was later confined to a psychiatric facility after judges found he had acted during an acute psychotic episode.
In December 2024, six people were killed and hundreds wounded when a car plowed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. A Saudi man was arrested and is currently on trial.
Several Syrian nationals were also arrested over attacks or plots at around the same time, including a stabbing spree that killed three people at a street festival in the city of Solingen.
Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 — an influx that has proved deeply divisive and helped fuel the rise of the far-right AfD.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took power last May, has vowed to crack down on criminal migrants and has ramped up deportations of convicts to Afghanistan.
Germany in December also deported a man to Syria for the first time since that country’s civil war broke out in 2011.
