Pope Francis will be greeted by children with flowers, a 21-gun salute and a candlelight vigil after he lands in Papua New Guinea on Friday. It will be the first 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 tainted the Roman Catholic Church.
Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries have sexually abused children after they moved to Papua New Guinea, or were found to have done so in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.
The 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 in similar circumstances. In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew the men had been convicted of abuse before they were transferred to the Pacific or shielded them from investigation, according to church records and survivor accounts.
It has been widely documented that the Church has secured a number of priests from the authorities by transferring them to other locations, sometimes to other countries. But what distinguishes these cases is the remoteness of the islands the men ended up on, making it difficult for authorities to track them down. Restoration also allowed men to enter 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 the region’s 15 countries and territories in the 1990s, but one still serves as an itinerant priest in the American territory of Guam, and another has returned to New Zealand, where he has been allowed to return by the church. for the ministry. Both deny allegations of abuse.
Christopher Longhurst, a New Zealand-based spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an aid group, said the organization planned to press the pope on the movement of priests to the Pacific while he was in Papua New Guinea.
The Pope’s next stop is East Timor. In 2022, the Vatican Bishop Carlos Ximenes Bello sentencedOn allegations of raping and abusing teenage boys decades ago in East Timor, heroes of the country’s independence movement.
Francis has apologized for the church’s global sex abuse scandal. He has ordered priests to report allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups and has issued a broad apology to all Catholics. But the remedies he offered, survivors and critics say, fall 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 are moving pedophiles and pederasts to the poorest countries in the world,” Ms Mulvihill said after being told of The Times’ findings. The church “used it to dismiss people they didn’t want to face.”
Accusations or convictions have been documented for all the priests and missionaries before, but, in more than a dozen cases, this is the first time they are reported to have moved to the Pacific. It is also the first time that widespread patterns of such movements have been identified on the Pacific Islands.
‘There is no verification’
In Fiji, one of the first public allegations of abuse against a priest or missionary was made in 2022. That was the case of Felix Framlin, who said he was abused as a child by New Zealand missionaries working in Fiji. His father did not believe his accusations and beat him instead.
“If you say something against the church, it’s like saying something against God,” said Mr. Framlin, who is now estranged from many family members and suffers from depression. Correspondence between his lawyer and Catholic officials showed that Mr. Fremlin had reached a financial settlement with the church.
Peter Loy Chong, Archbishop of Fiji’s capital Suva, said he had no records of abusive priests being moved to his archdiocese.
But such cases were possible, Ms. Mulvihill said, because of the way the church was organized. Many of the accused priests and brothers belonged to Catholic religious orders overseen by their own superiors, and not by diocesan bishops and archbishops.
Others were priests who belonged to Catholic dioceses and therefore needed the personal approval of the local bishop before moving. But often, Ms. Bishops “probably weren’t asking questions” when colleagues requested transfers for such men, Mulvihill said. “There is no verification,” she said. “It’s back to normal.”
Each order and diocese ultimately reports to the Vatican. Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, said he had no knowledge of the cases and said it would be inappropriate to comment on them because he did not know the specifics of each one. He emphasized Francis’ “commitment to ensure abuse is never tolerated” and referred individual dioceses and orders to The Times.
The Times sought comment from all 34 men’s orders or dioceses. Many did not respond, and some declined to comment. Most responded that they had no records of the men or that they only received reports of abuse after the men returned from overseas.
Twenty-two of these priests and missionaries were convicted of abuse, pleaded guilty, or were considered credibly accused by their religious orders or dioceses. Four others died before the claims against them were made public.
Three men who denied allegations of abuse were investigated by police but did not go to trial because of health or mental health issues. Prosecutors filed charges against three others who also denied the abuse allegations, but the first died before trial, the second’s case was stayed by a judge for procedural reasons, and the third’s case was stayed by a judge for unclear reasons. The diocese did not respond to questions later. The remaining two priests, who are now in Guam and New Zealand, deny the abuse claims and have not faced charges from prosecutors.
Brother Gerard Brady, the head of Oceania for an order, the Christian Brothers, apologized and said, “We acknowledge that some of the past responses fell far short of the procedures and standards we have today to protect children.”
Tenure at the Vatican
In Papua New Guinea and East Timor, Francis is on two visits Overwhelming Christian Countries are Catholic The largest denomination in Papua New Guinea and accounts for more than a quarter of the population. 98 percent of people in East Timor follow this faith.
Christianity spread to the Pacific Islands through a strong partnership between missionaries and local leaders during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, many countries in the region have strong religious cultures where more than 95 percent of the population identify as Christians.
Rev. Julian Fox taught in Catholic schools around Melbourne in his native Australia for decades after his ordination. He became the Salesian of Don Bosco, the Australian head of his order. But in 1999, according to documents released by an independent inquiry set up by the Australian government, he moved to the small Pacific island nation of Fiji. At the same time, according to news media reports, a former student accused the priest of rape.
Subsequent accounts in the news media and by the Salesians differ as to whether Father Fox left Australia before or because of the allegations. But both show church leaders did not require them to return to Australia, despite other allegations of abuse by Father Fox being reported to them. He was within his legal rights to remain in Fiji, and therefore out of reach of the Australian authorities. After spending several years in Fiji, he took an assignment at the Vatican.
According to media reports, Father Fox returned home a decade after the initial accusation, which the church settled privately through an extensive reconciliation program called Towards Healing. He subsequently faced charges in court and was convicted in 2015 of abusing five children, some of whom he beat and violated with pool cues, according to Australian media reports.
The Salesians of Don Bosco in Melbourne did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and Father Fox could not be located for comment. The Dallas Morning News first reported his case in 2004, along with two other abusive Salesian priests who migrated to the Pacific.
Admission of abuse
Often, church officials knew that priests and missionaries had abused them before sending them to the Pacific.
According to a report issued years later by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, in 1986, a couple went to a priest in Baltimore to talk about Brother William Morgan, an American missionary who had briefly returned from Papua New Guinea.
The couple said Brother Morgan had touched their 4-year-old granddaughter with his penis and had abused other children in the past, according to notes taken by a Baltimore priest that were cited in the Maryland report. A letter written by the priest showed that Brother Morgan later admitted that he had “caressed and touched” the children many times while he was in Papua New Guinea. Despite his admission, Brother Morgan’s superiors at the Society of the Divine Word, his religious order, sent him back to the island nation for five years.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which obtained the notes and correspondence, found no record of the report to law enforcement.
Rev. Adam Oleszczuk, leader of the Society of the Divine Word’s Chicago province, which includes Baltimore, said he had no record of Brother Morgan.
In multiple cases, moving to the Pacific offered Catholic individuals an opportunity to escape.
In 1971, Brother Roger Moloney was appointed by the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God as leader of the Maryland School in Christchurch, New Zealand. His job was to take care of disabled children. Six years later, a man anonymously reported to the brother’s superiors in Australia that Brother Moloney had sexually abused a child, according to a New Zealand government investigation.
Months later, he was transferred to serve in the pharmacy at the Vatican. He then moved to Papua New Guinea, the inquest heard, where he worked in the 1980s and 1990s, and eventually to Australia.
Brother Moloney was extradited to New Zealand in 2006, convicted of abusing five boys and sentenced to almost three years in prison. Court records. He passed away in 2019. His command did not respond to questions.
In Fiji, Mr. Framlin now coordinates a support network for survivors of clerical abuse, most of whom keep their experiences secret. All have “marriage problems, job problems,” he said. “Some are violent towards women, some have drug problems.”
He added: “Overseas, you have experts. Here in Fiji, we have none. The only counseling we get is when we sit down and talk to each other.”
This story was reported by Peter M. was supported by a grant from the Ackland Foundation, a New Zealand media charity.
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