The most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the world to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse was sentenced to 12 months’ detention at an Australian court on Tuesday.
Philip Wilson, 67, was ordered to be assessed by prison authorities for home detention, instead of jail, and will face court again next month for a decision on where he will serve the sentence.
Wilson will be eligible for parole after six months, emailed court documents show.
Wilson was found guilty in May in the Newcastle Local Court of failing to report to police the repeated abuse of two altar boys by a paedophile priest in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney during the 1970s.
The court was told in December that Wilson had early stage Alzheimer’s disease, a Catholic Church spokesman said last month, a factor that may be taken in to account in determining where he serves the term.
In May, Wilson was convicted of covering up a serious indictable offense by another priest, James Fletcher, after being told about it in 1976 when he was an assistant parish priest in the state of New South Wales.
Lawyers for Wilson, who maintained his innocence throughout the legal process, had argued that he did not know that Fletcher had abused a boy. Fletcher was found guilty in 2004 of nine counts of child sexual abuse and died in jail in 2006 following a stroke.
Originally from the rural Hunter Valley in New South Wales where he served as a young priest, Wilson stepped down as archbishop of Adelaide and was replaced by a Vatican-appointed administrator.
Last year, Australia completed a five-year government-appointed inquiry into child sex abuse in churches and other institutions, amid allegations worldwide that churches had protected pedophile priests by moving them from parish to parish.
The inquiry heard that seven percent of Catholic priests working in Australia between 1950 and 2010 had been accused of child sex crimes and that nearly 1,100 people had filed child sexual assault claims against the Anglican Church over 35 years.
The conviction is another step toward holding the church to account for a global abuse crisis that has also engulfed Pope Francis’ financial minister, Australian Cardinal George Pell.
Some lawyers said they expect many more clerics to be charged in Australia as a result of Wilson’s test case.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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