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Melbourne, Australia, Mar 4, 2019 / 10:28 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell is incarcerated at the Melbourne Assessment Prison while he awaits the results of a sentencing hearing held last week. Pell was convicted last year of child sexual abuse.

The ca… […]

Palmerston North, New Zealand, Oct 4, 2019 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a bishop in New Zealand, following an investigation into a complaint of “unacceptable behaviour of a sexual nature” made by a young woman.

Bishop Charles Drennan, 59, was the subject of an investigation by Cardinal John Dew of Wellington. Drennan had led the Diocese of Palmerston North since 2012.

Under Vos estis lux mundi, recent guidelines for investigations into misconduct claims against bishops which Pope Francis announced in May, metropolitan archbishops are placed in charge of investigations into suffragan bishops. Cardinal Dew is Archbishop of Wellington, to whom the rest of New Zealand’s diocesan bishops are suffragan.

Dew said Oct. 4 that upon receiving the young woman’s complaint, the New Zealand Church’s independent investigation body, the National Office of Professional Standards (NOPS), contracted an “independent, licenced investigator” to investigate under Dew’s oversight. The woman requested that details of the complaint remain private, Dew said.

In its Oct. 4 bulletin announcing episcopal resignations and appointments, the Vatican did not specify the reason for Drennan’s resignation.

Bishop Drennan stood aside from his duties during the investigation and both he and the complainant participated in the investigation. Dew said the Church has been in ongoing contact with the woman and is committed to continuing to support her.

“The Catholic Church has no tolerance for any inappropriate behaviour by any of its members. I encourage anyone who experiences such behaviour to bring it to the attention of the Church, police or any organisation with which they feel comfortable,” Dew said Oct. 4.

The Associated Press reports that Drennan was a member of the New Zealand church team of priests and sisters selected to respond to the country’s Royal Commission inquiry into sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults in state and faith-based care between 1950-1999. He was also secretary of the New Zealand bishop’s conference.

Drennan was also chosen by the nation’s bishops as a delegate from New Zealand to the Vatican’s 2015 Synod on the Family, and he also attended the Synod on the New Evangelization in 2012.

He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Christchurch in 1996, and was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Palmerston North in 2011, succeeding as ordinary the following year.

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Brisbane, Australia, Feb 25, 2019 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane is being investigated by his former archdiocese over his alleged handling of information on child sex abuse given him by a woman during a 2006 meeting.

As president of the Australian bishops’ conference, Coleridge attended the Feb. 21-24 Vatican summit on the protection of minors in the Church.

Guardian Australia reported Feb. 25 that “the complaint against Coleridge relates to a 2006 meeting with a Canberra woman who had offered information about child sexual abuse.”

The woman was relating information about abuse in the Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn. Coleridge was appointed Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn in June of that year, and was installed Aug. 17.

According to Guardian Australia, it is alleged Coleridge called the woman a gossip “and acted agressively towards her.”

Coleridge has denied the allegations.

A representative of the the Canberra-Goulburn archdioese told Guardian Australia it is conducting an independent investigation, but progress has been delayed because the woman is not participating: “Archbishop Mark Coleridge cooperated with the investigation and strongly refuted the allegations. When [the complainant] was invited to cooperate with the independent investigation, she chose not to engage with the process. She has instead chosen to take these allegations to the media, which is deeply disappointing.”

The Archdiocese of Sydney has also been made aware of the allegations.

Coleridge was born in 1948, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 1974, where he then became auxiliary bishop in 2002. He was Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn from 2006 to 2012, when he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

He gave a homily at a Mass in the Vatican’s Sala Regia Feb. 24 at the conclusion of the child abuse summit, during which he said that “at times we have seen victims and survivors as the enemy. We have been our own worst enemy.”

The Brisbane archbishop also lamented weak historical care of sex abuse victims, and urged “very practical ways of accompanying all those who have been abused in whatever way they need to be accompanied.”

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