The Vatican had shared with police findings of an internal investigation of a former Australian bishop over child sex abuse allegations and the church would fully cooperate with criminal investigators, a cleric said on Friday.
The Catholic Church announced the handover of its investigation report into former Bishop Christopher Saunders three days after the Western Australia Police Force publicly revealed it had requested a duplicate.
“The church will proceed to supply full transparency and cooperation with W.A. Police,” Bishop Michael Morrissey, who replaced Saunders within the Broome Diocese in 2021, said in a press release.
“The church encourages anyone who has experienced abuse, or suspects abuse throughout the community, to come back forward and report it to police,” Morrissey added.
Saunders, now 73, denied any wrongdoing and refused to take part in the Vatican investigation, which began last 12 months, the church said.
He resigned in 2021 as bishop of Broome, an Outback diocese of northwest Australia larger than France but with a population of only 50,000, after police announced they’d dropped a sex crime investigation. He had stood down a 12 months earlier after media reported the allegations.
The Vatican this week confirmed it had accomplished its Saunders investigation that it said couldn’t have begun before the police investigation had ended.
The confirmation followed media reports on Monday that the 200-page Vatican report found Saunders likely sexually assaulted 4 Indigenous youths and potentially groomed one other 67 Indigenous youths and men.
The church refuses to publicly detail the allegations that were investigated.
Police had conducted two investigations into allegations against Saunders between 2018 and 2020. Prosecutors had concluded there was insufficient evidence to put charges.
In requesting the Vatican report, a police statement said on Tuesday: “If further information involves light, police will investigate.”
Morrissey said the Vatican report had been handed to Western Australia Deputy Police Commissioner Allan Adams. Morrissey didn’t say when.
The church and police “remain in ongoing and collaborative contact on the matter,” Morrissey said.
Police on Friday declined to comment on what they intended to do with the report.
Saunders, who continues to carry the church title of bishop, is now Australia’s most senior cleric known to be accused of kid abuse in a scandal that has enveloped the church world wide.
Cardinal George Pell was the third highest-ranking cleric within the Vatican when he was convicted in an Australian court in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in 1996, when Pell was an archbishop.
Pell spent 13 months in prison before the convictions were overturned on appeal. He maintained his innocence until his death in Rome in January.
Saunders began working in Broome as a deacon in 1975 and have become bishop in 1996.
