In the Pacific, a ‘Dumping Ground’ for Priests Accused or Convicted of Abuse
SUVA, Fiji — Pope Francis was expected to be welcomed by children bearing flowers, a 21-gun salute and a candlelight vigil after landing in Papua New Guinea on Friday. It would be the first papal visit in three decades to the Pacific islands, a deeply Christian region — but one that has played a little-known role in the clergy abuse scandal that has stained the Roman Catholic Church.
Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries moved to Papua New Guinea after they had allegedly sexually abused children, or had been found to do so, in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.
These men were part of a larger pattern: At least 24 other priests and missionaries left New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States for Pacific island countries such as Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa under similar circumstances. In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew that these men had been accused or convicted of abuse before they transferred to the Pacific, according to church records and survivor accounts, shielding them from scrutiny.
It has been widely documented that the church has protected scores of priests from authorities by shuffling them to other places, sometimes in other countries. But what sets these cases apart is the remoteness of the islands the men ended up in, making it harder for authorities to pursue them. The relocations also gave the men access to vulnerable communities where priests were considered beyond reproach.
Notably, at least three of these men, according to government inquiries and news media reports, went on to abuse new victims in the Pacific.
Most moved to or served in 15 countries and territories in the region in the 1990s, but one still serves as an itinerant priest in Guam, an American territory, and another has returned to New Zealand, where he has been cleared by the church to return to ministry. Both deny the allegations of abuse.
Christopher Longhurst, a New Zealand-based spokesperson for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a support group, said the organization plans to press the pope on the movement of the priests to the Pacific while he is in Papua New Guinea.
The pope’s next stop will be East Timor. In 2022, the Vatican punished Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a hero of the nation’s independence movement, over allegations that he had raped and abused teenage boys decades ago in East Timor.
Francis has made a string of apologies for the church’s global sex abuse scandal. He has ordered clergy to report allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups and issued a broad apology to all Catholics. But the remedies he has offered, survivors and critics say, fall well short of his words.
Michelle Mulvihill, a former nun and adviser to the Australian Catholic Church, has long accused Catholic organizations of using the Pacific islands as a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.
“We’re moving pedophiles and pederasts into the poorest countries in the world,” Mulvihill said after being told of The New York Times’ findings. The church “used them to discard those people who they didn’t want to confront.”
Allegations or convictions have previously been documented for all the priests and missionaries in question, but in more than a dozen cases, this is the first time their subsequent move to the Pacific has been reported. It is also the first time a widespread pattern of such movement to the Pacific islands has been identified.
‘There’s No Vetting’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pacific-dumping-ground-priests-accused-121600056.html