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The Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson, was sentenced by the local court of Newcastle, New South Wales, to one year in jail, the maximum sentence. The accused refused to denounce a pedophile priest to the competent authorities. The 67-year-old Australian prelate is the oldest member of the Catholic Church to be found guilty in worldwide investigations into badual abuse perpetrated by clergy.
The charges against the Archbishop of Adelaide a reference to the period when he was a young pastor of the community of Maitland, New South Wales In the 1970s Wilson received various reports of badual harbadment by James Patrick Fletcher. The latter, a priest of the same parish of the archbishop sentenced today, had been accused of pedophilia by altar boys. The faithful of the community would have turned to Wilson to inform the church authorities and the police of the crimes against Fletcher. In spite of the innumerable testimonies addressed to him, the current archbishop of Adelaide did not consider credible the theses of the victims boiling them like "rumors" intended to tarnish the reputation of the Church. Wilson would never have laid charges against Fletcher for the attention of the diocesan summits. The pedophile was reportedly convicted of nine cases of abuse in 2004 and died in the cell two years ago.
After nearly forty years, the ubiquitous behavior of the current Archbishop of Adelaide was tried by a court as a crime. Wilson was seen to inflict twelve months in prison on pain of being placed under house arrest. Once half of the sentence has been expelled, he can take the probation application to the court. The advocates of the prelate constantly urged the judges to take due account of the precarious health conditions of the accused. According to the archbishop's lawyers, the prison would have aggravated the pathologies suffered by the latter, in the first place the Alzheimer's disease
The house arrest imposed on Wilson was considered by individuals violated by Fletcher as an "unjustified act of clemency" against a cleric who, in defense of the Church's reputation, "voluntarily concealed" the testimonies sent by the victims of the pedophile. The latter's defense badociations, however, have defined the phrase "an epoch-making victory for the country," pointing to the fact that Wilson is the most important representative of the national clergy to to be sanctioned as part of the "scandal-harbadment". The Australian Bishops 'Conference called for the judges' decision to "restore peace" to Fletcher's victims, victims who have never been heard "for too long." Prior to the court verdict, the Archbishop of Adelaide had waived to take part in public events, but had not officially left the diocesan leadership. For the moment, he has not issued a statement about his future in the Church of Pope Francis.
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