Australian archbishop found guilty of concealing child sex abuses
Canberra, May 22: An Australian court has found Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson guilty of concealing child sexual abuse cases, media reported on Monday. He faces a maximum jail term of upto two years.
Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, becomes the most senior Catholic in the world to be charged and convicted of the offence, the BBC reported.
He was found to have covered up the abuse of altar boys by a paedophile priest in New South Wales in the 1970s. Wilson will be sentenced in June.
During his trial, Wilson denied any memory of being told about the abuse by two of the boys.
He told the Newcastle court he had not been aware of priest James Fletcher's abuse, which took place while he was an assistant priest in Maitland, the BBC report added.
Fletcher was convicted of nine child sexual abuse charges in 2004 and died in jail in 2006.
One of his victims, Peter Creigh, told the court he had described the abuse to Wilson in detail when he was 15, five years after the abuse, the BBC reported.
Magistrate Robert Stone rejected Wilson's assertion that he could not remember the conversation and said he found Creigh to be a reliable witness.
The priest knew "what he was hearing was a credible allegation and the accused wanted to protect the Church and its reputation", said Magistrate Stone.
Wilson's lawyers had attempted four times to get the case thrown out after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the BBC said.
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HP Cong Minority Morcha delegation meets with party leader Venugopal over mosque row
Shimla (PTI): A delegation of the Himachal Congress Minority Morcha apprised the party's central leaders on Thursday of the atmosphere of fear created in the state by targeting a particular community and staging demonstrations near mosques.
The delegation led by Iqbal Mohammad, president of the state Congress Minority Morcha, also comprised imams of various mosques. It met with Congress general secretary K C Venugopal and its Minority Morcha national president Imran Pratapgarhi in New Delhi.
In a statement here, the state Congress Minority Morcha said the situation has become tense due to demonstrations by Hindu outfits in front of mosques and efforts were being made to vitiate the atmosphere and instill fear among Muslims.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is trying to take people of all religions along but some elements are trying to spoil the atmosphere and malign the government, it added.
According to the statement, Venugopal spoke to the chief minister over the phone over the issue.
Ten people were injured during a protest demanding the demolition of a portion of a mosque in Shimla's Sanjauli area last week. In Mandi, police used water cannons on protestors demanding the demolition of an unauthorised portion of a mosque in the town.
On Tuesday, residents of Kasumpti in Shimla submitted a memorandum to demolish a mosque in the area and similar demands are also coming in from Sunni and other areas in the state.
A dispute between a barber from the minority community and a local businessman in the Malyana area in the suburbs of Shimla on August 30 turned into a communal issue with Hindu groups demanding the demolition of unauthorised mosques and residents calling for the identification and verification of outsiders coming in the state.
