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
Displaced Sudanese escape RSF siege in southern Kordofan
- Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash, and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent
GEDAREF, Sudan: When paramilitary Rapid Support Force fighters closed in on the Sudanese border town and oil field of Heglig, paraplegic Dowa Hamed could only cling to her husband’s back as they fled, “like a child,” she said
Now, the 25-year-old mother of five — paralyzed from the waist down — lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu Al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit center just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 km from home.
But her family’s actual journey was much longer, crossing the South Sudan border twice and passing from one group of fighters to another, as they ran for their lives with their children in tow alongside hundreds of others.
“We fled with nothing,” Hamed said. “Only the clothes on our backs.”
Hamed and her family are among tens of thousands of people recently uprooted by fighting in southern Kordofan — the latest front in the war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces that erupted in April 2023.
Since capturing the army’s last stronghold in Darfur in October, the RSF and their allies have pushed deeper into neighboring Kordofan, an oil-rich agricultural region divided into three states: West, North, and South.
In recent weeks, the paramilitary group has consolidated control over West Kordofan, seized Heglig — home to Sudan’s largest oil field — and tightened its siege on Kadugli and Dilling in South Kordofan, where hundreds of thousands now face mass starvation.
On the night of Dec. 7, the inhabitants of Heglig — many of them the families of oil technicians, engineers, and soldiers stationed at the field — got word that an attack would happen at dawn.
“We ran on foot, barefoot, without proper clothes,” said Hiyam Al-Hajj, 29, a mother of 10 who says she had to leave her mother and six siblings behind as she ran around 30 km to the border.
“The RSF chased us to the border. The South Sudan army told them we were in their country and they would not hand us over,” she said.
They were sheltered in South Sudan’s Unity State, but barely fed.
“Those who had money could feed their children,” Al-Hajj said. “Those who did not went hungry.”
They spent nearly four weeks on the move, trekking long distances on foot and spending nights out in the open, sleeping on the bare ground.
“We were hungry,” she said. “But we did not feel the hunger; all we cared about was our safety.”
Eventually, authorities in South Sudan put them in large trucks that carried them back across the border to army-controlled territory, where they could head east, away from the front lines.
Hamed, who was paralyzed during childbirth, said that “during the truck rides, my body ached with every movement.”
But not everyone made it to Gedaref.
Between the canvas tents of the Abu Al-Naga camp, 14-year-old Sarah is struggling to care for her little brother alone.
In South Sudan, their parents had put them on one of the trucks, “then they said the truck was full and promised they would get on the next one.”
But weeks on, the siblings have received no word as to where their mother and father might be.
Inside the tents, children and mothers sleep on the ground, huddled together for warmth, while outside, children dart across the cracked soil, dust clinging to their bare feet.
According to camp director Ali Yehia Ahmed, 240 families, or around 1,200 people, are now taking refuge at Abu Al-Naga.
“The camp’s space is very small,” Ahmed said, adding that food was in increasingly short supply.
Food is distributed from a single point, forcing families to wait for limited rations.
Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash, and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent.
Asia Abdelrahman Hussein, the minister of social welfare and development of Gedaref State, said shelter was one of the most urgent needs, especially during the winter months.
“The shelters are not enough. We need support from other organizations to provide safe housing and adequate shelter,” she said.
In one of the tents, Sawsan Othman Moussa, 27, said how she had been forced to flee three times since fighting broke out in Dilling.
Now, though she might be safe, “every tent is cramped, medicine is scarce, and during cold nights, we suffer.”
