Change Of Heart

Newcastle Herald

Saturday July 26, 2008

Joanne McCarthy

THE road that led to Bishop Michael Malone's call in May for a papal apology to victims of pedophile priests began in 2004 when clergyman Jim Fletcher was found guilty of sexually abusing Daniel Feenan, the son of the bishop's most trusted and senior employee.

Almost certainly no other Australian bishop has been in Malone's position with one friend as sexual predator priest and another friend as devastated father of the victim.

"It brought it home," Malone said this week, during a long, frank and unprecedented interview with The Herald after months of painful airing of the diocese's sad history of abuse, and after the Maitland-Newcastle bishop's lone stand as a senior cleric calling for the Pope to apologise during World Youth Day.

"It was a case of here's a priest invited into the Feenan home, shown love and friendship, and he abused that friendship so badly," Malone said.

It made Fletcher's years-long abuse of a child "not a cold, out-there thing, but close to home". He started to see things from the victims' point of view.

"I'd have to say my level of empathy has altered considerably from being fairly defensive of the Church, to where my primary responsibility these days is to the victims, and not the Church."

And sadly, that sets him apart.

On May 7, in the lead-up to World Youth Day, Malone's public support for a papal apology to victims of pedophile priests shifted the issue from external appeal to internal challenge for Australia's Church hierarchy, and eventually the Vatican.

By early this month he put into words what many were thinking: "It's not a big deal to say sorry, although it seems to be for some people."

On the day Pope Benedict XVI apologised in front of virtually every Australian bishop and priest who could fit into Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral but not a single abuse victim Malone was outside, walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with pilgrims. He was probably the only bishop who chose not to attend the dinner that followed.

"It was World Youth Day, for God's sake. I thought, this is about youth. It's not about bishops hanging around with each other," he said this week.

And while he didn't hear the Pope speak the words, the bishop has taken them as a green light to speak strongly about the Church's failings, his own failings and the role of the individual within the Church.

"I think we have to admit that we are in diminishment as a church, not only in terms of the downward trend in numbers and I think that downward trend will continue but also in terms of our credibility," he said.

While the handling of the sexual abuse issue has been critical in that, the power exerted by the Church is just as significant.

"The close liaison between Church and state has brought the Church to the point where it exercises a level of power that it should never have exercised," he said.

"I really think the future of the Church lies in its smallness, its authenticity, and its capacity to walk with people, and in walking with some of them the marginalised people and the poor to have none of this pomp and splendour and stuff like that.

"The Church is a big institution, and any institution . . . runs the risk of being top heavy with its own bureaucratic sense of itself."

The Church's handling of the papal apology caused damage, Malone said.

There was the silence of the bishops.

"I don't want to run my fellow bishops down you know, but silence, I think, equals either weakness or an inability to come to terms with the realities the Church is facing at the moment," he said.

There was the treatment of Anthony and Christine Foster, whose two daughters were raped by a priest, leaving one to commit suicide and the other disabled because of an accident. The couple's very public call for compassion from the Church was met with a wall of silence.

"I was quite upset about that," Malone said. "They were still left outside behind the barricade. I really felt, 'You poor buggers. You've borne a heavy weight.' All because of some priest who worked his way into their family and stuffed up their lives.

"A lot of good could have come if they had been included. Again it shows, 'We'll [the Church] handle this our way', and it didn't show a freedom to reach out to these people with compassion and love, as the Pope said we should do."

He described the Pope's later private meeting with four abuse victims chosen by the Church as "a bit contrived".

"I don't know whether the Pope knew who he was meeting. Poor man, he's a prisoner."

The Pope was most likely "just pointed in the direction of four people" who would have been overwhelmed just to meet him, he said.

"They [the abuse victims] would not have been representative of the vast number of victims out there, who are very angry and very upset about the Church, who have turned their backs against the Church and who don't have a voice because of that. It just goes to show we've got to do it better."

Sexual abuse by priests has been a defining issue during Malone's time at the helm of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

"On the very day Vince Ryan [a priest who sexually abused at least 26 young boys] was arrested and charged . . . Bishop Leo [Clarke, his predecessor] whispered to me that he had submitted his resignation to the Pope," Malone recalled.

That afternoon, in October 1995, the Vatican's representative in Australia, the Papal Nuncio, phoned from Canberra to say the resignation had been accepted. Malone was the new bishop.

He does not agree that Clarke fell on his sword or knew Ryan was a pedophile. He believed Clarke resigned because "he was just tired and he'd had it".

"I asked Leo later about Jim Fletcher. I asked him, 'Did you know anything?' He looked me in the eyes and said 'No'."

He does agree with the term "poisoned chalice" to describe the job Leo Clarke handed to him.

Ryan pleaded guilty, leaving Malone and business manager John Feenan father of Daniel to negotiate the highest-known Australian compensation payments by the Church to victims, because of the proven failure of the Church's duty of care towards Ryan's victims.

"It had a heavy impact on me emotionally because I was sitting across the table from young men who had been abused by a priest I'd known in the seminary," Malone said.

Ryan would also have been, as Malone stunningly revealed this week, his choice as vicar general, the bishop's second-in-charge.

"He presented well. He was to all intents and purposes a successful priest. Articulate," he said.

"I was in total shock when he admitted it. Their [the victims'] stories when they told me were really horrendous . . . really awful stuff."

But the Church's response at the time was "fairly calculated and, I'd have to say, a fairly cold response".

"It was a fairly mechanical kind of thing. It was, 'Victim, meet bishop; bishop apologise; final settlement arranged; sign here and get on with your life'. It was a fairly cold process, but it was a process I was caught up in as bishop.

"The sense of ongoing support wasn't there, and wasn't mentioned, and I didn't think of it, really."

The bishop also confirmed this week that he was interviewed by police on suspicion of concealing a crime before charges were laid against Jim Fletcher.

"I told Fletcher that police were about to investigate him and it was something that in retrospect I shouldn't have done," Malone said.

"I didn't think that by telling him there was going to be an investigation, that he might have an opportunity to destroy evidence or to hide away things."

Malone's heavily criticised decision not to stand down Fletcher during the investigation was also wrong, he conceded.

"I received advice but I think it was wrong advice and I should have stood him aside," he said. "I should have questioned that advice. It was advice that suited me because I didn't want to stand him aside.

"You've got your own feelings about it. I stuffed up on a couple of things there."

Maitland-Newcastle diocese spends about $500,000 each year on its child protection unit based at Zimmerman House, Carrington. It is the only such unit in an Australian diocese, offering lifelong support to abuse victims.

Malone said Zimmerman, which opened about 18 months ago, was "important for my sanity", after a long period of feeling "overburdened" by the number of sexual abuse cases in the diocese.

"With each case, you have a sense that there can't be any more," he said.

But there were.

The difference in approach was apparent at a meeting of NSW and ACT bishops about four or five years ago, Malone said.

While Malone was planning for Zimmerman House, other bishops' plans for child protection included "having somebody part-time, working out of the schools office one day a week and I'm thinking to myself, 'What's going on here?' "

Asked if he worried about sexual abuse victims in other parts of Australia, Malone replied: "I do, I worry very much because I think sexual abuse in the Church is not restricted to Maitland-Newcastle diocese . . . but I don't know that the level of seriousness is in fact being applied [in other dioceses] as it should be, and in light of the Pope's apology, I think Australia's going to have to lift its game in the whole area of response."

Malone called himself a "wuss", and said his unlikely crusader role during World Youth Day was not something he planned or was particularly comfortable with.

But he intended to use the Pope's words when bishops meet to "speak strongly" about the sexual abuse issue.

"I don't mince my words about the effect all this must be having on the image of the Church," he said.

"The Pope challenged the leaders of the Church, mainly people like the bishops, to bring the perpetrators to justice, to not let them off or move them around or to somehow cover up their crimes, but to root them out.

"He also challenged us me to walk with victims with compassion and love through a process of healing. That's what I heard him say."

While bishops even 10 years ago "didn't have a clue" about handling sexual abuse, there should be no excuses now, he said.

"It was seen as an individual human weakness, like a sin, and in order to have the sin forgiven you'd go to confession, be forgiven and go on. That was wrong."

It has been a difficult year for Malone. But he has no regrets about speaking out, and would do so again.

"I know that supporting the apology was right, and I was confident it was the right thing. If a matter of justice is so obvious that nobody else is speaking, then yes, I would be forced to speak," he said.

He supported the painful airing of the Church's mistakes in The Herald, and said the past four years since Fletcher was jailed had been "a steep learning curve".

"I think it's brought me to the point of honesty and transparency with myself and with these situations," he said.

"So after 131/2 years, something's rubbed off on me at last."

ALTERED STANCE: QUOTES FROM THE HERALD BY MICHAEL MALONE

SEPTEMBER 1997: "Until recent times, he thought he was making these young blokes happy because that was the way he himself had been happy as a child."

Describing how Vince Ryan saw his sexual abuse.

MAY 2001: "For Mr Corbett to accuse church authorities of covering up this case is both incorrect and a slur on the integrity of those authorities."

In response to Jeff Corbett's allegations that people in the church knew of Vince Ryan's sexual offences.

SEPTEMBER 2004: "I chose not to inform the people because I didn't really think that needed to be done and a man was entitled to his own reputation in the eyes of the people."

Defending his appointment of priest Guy Hartcher after publicity about an earlier allegation against him. Malone later removed Hartcher as "unfit for the ministry".

MARCH 2006: "I think the matter should proceed so no question mark is left open about James Fletcher's innocence or guilt."

March 2006, supporting a controversial High Court appeal after Fletcher's death.

SEPTEMBER 2007: "With the benefit of hindsight, more could have been done to confront sexual abuse in the church."

After Monsignor Patrick Cotter's cover-up of Vince Ryan's offences is revealed.

JULY 2008: "If the Pope doesn't speak, if he doesn't apologise during this visit, it would be the silence that would be the real issue."

Calling for a papal apology before World Youth Day

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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