Australian bishop acknowledges 8-year delay in justice in Indigenous abuse case but defends process

ROME — A top Australian Catholic bishop has acknowledged the eight-year delay in bringing a fellow bishop to justice on charges he sexually abused young Indigenous men. But he defended the church’s decision to let police take the lead in the case as a necessary guarantee.

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Bishops Conference, said Friday he hoped the church could soon reopen its own in-house legal procedures against former Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders now that he has been sentenced criminally.

“We still have to respect the integrity of the Australian justice system,” Costelloe told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a Vatican conference. “That’s been probably the fundamental reason why it’s stretched out as long as it has.”

Saunders, 76, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison on Wednesday after he was convicted by a District Court of Western Australia state jury of 13 out of 19 charges of sexual abuse that occurred between 2008 and 2019 in his sprawling Broome Diocese on the country’s tropical northwest coast.

Prosecutors alleged Saunders lured young Indigenous men to his church-owned house with alcohol and cigarettes paid for with church funds. He denied wrongdoing. It isn’t