News that Canon Mortimer Stanley, the former parish priest of St Vincent
de Paul Roman Catholic Church in Norden has been interviewed by the
Greater Manchester Police under caution, following accusations from
three women that he sexually abused them as children ('Parishioners left
shocked by abuse allegations', 11 December 2013), once again brings
difficult issues to public attention. Not least amongst these issues is
the need to shine a light on the actions of the Diocese of Salford and
its agencies in response to cases where its priests have already been
convicted of abusing children and, most especially, on its continuing
refusal to provide information regarding the ongoing canonical status of
such priests. I am thinking, in particular, of the case of Father
William Green, former parish priest of Holy Family, Wigan.
Green was convicted in August 2008 of 26 offences of indecent assault against children and sentenced in October 2008 to 6 years imprisonment. However, since a spokesperson for the Diocese of Salford claimed in September 2010 that “William Green is in the process of being laicised.” the public and the Diocese of Salford have been told nothing about whether Father William Green has been laicised or not. Meanwhile, when I requested information about this from the Salford Diocese Safeguarding Commission in May 2012, its chair, Mr Michael Devlin told me that they would not respond to my questions.
It would, of course, be comforting (but naive) to hope that Green has been quietly laicised, but this cannot be taken for granted. In an earlier case in the Diocese of Salford, the public and parishioners were persuaded to assume that Father Thomas Doherty, the former parish priest of St Joseph’s, Todmorden had been laicised, only to discover at his death in 2010 that he had gone to his grave still a priest. This was despite his conviction for serious offences of indecency against a boy under 16 and a 6 year sentence, and despite the fact that Bishop Terence Brain of Salford is amongst those who, since 2001, have claimed to be fully committed to implementing the recommendations of the Nolan report, including those regarding laicisation. Recommendation 78, for example, states that “if a bishop, priest or deacon is convicted of a criminal offence against children and is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more, then it would normally be right to initiate the process of laicisation and failure to do so would need to be justified”.
People in the Diocese of Salford have been promised openness and transparency in these matters many times, only to be disappointed by the refusal of the Diocese to answer simple questions. In Norden on Sunday, they were told by Bishop Brain's spokesperson that they could rely on the "robust safeguarding procedures put in place by the Catholic Church in this country in recent years", but in previous recent cases like Green's, the Diocese will not tell us the outcome of any procedures it has followed and in Doherty's case they do not even appear to have followed the policies they claim to support.
Robust procedures are only as good as their implementation. Rhetoric is not the same thing as reality, and in light of the latest cause for concern in Rochdale, it is high time that we learned whether and how the Diocese is actually implementing the Nolan recommendations. A dozen years after Bishop Brain and his brother bishops told us that they had accepted Nolan, it is surely time for him or Mr Devlin to be open with us. We need to know whether or not Father William Green remains 'alter Christus' (another Christ) in the eyes of the Diocese and we still need to know why Father Thomas Doherty was never laicised.
