AUSTRALIA: The governor-general of Australia faced fresh calls for his resignation yesterday over allegations that he ignored sexual abuse in the church during his previous career as Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.
Dr Peter Hollingworth, the official representative of Queen Elizabeth, said fresh accusations at the weekend that he did nothing about three sex abuse scandals in his diocese were untrue and would not force him from his high-profile post.
"If there is any damage being done, it's being done to me, the incumbent, and it's being done on the basis of allegations that are not substantiated," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in a television interview yesterday.
"My intention is to carry out that role for the rest of the term to the best of my ability to serve the Australian people," he said.
But he added that the controversy, which erupted two weeks before a scheduled visit by the queen , was taking a toll on his family.
Newspapers splashed the scandal across front pages yesterday, with editorials and victims' support groups calling for Dr Hollingworth to resign. Dr Hollingworth's past as one of the nation's senior prelates has haunted him almost since the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, appointed the 66-year-old grandfather and outspoken champion of the poor to Australia's top unelected post last June.
Within months, he apologised for failing to reveal sex abuse at an Anglican school in Brisbane, saying "legal and insurance" considerations had inhibited him from taking a more active role during that incident. On Sunday, the Australian television network Channel Nine reported that Dr Hollingworth had also failed to act against two priests who confessed to sexually abusing children in separate incidents during his 11-year period as Archbishop of Brisbane. In one case, Dr Hollingworth allegedly discouraged a victim from pursuing an abuse claim against a priest.
Later, when the priest confessed to abusing a boy, Dr Hollingworth allegedly let the man carry on working with choir boys. In the second incident, Dr Hollingworth allegedly allowed a bishop to continue in office despite his admission that he had had a sexual relationship with a teenage girl years earlier and requests by the girl, now a woman, that the bishop be dismissed.
After Dr Hollingworth resigned last year to become governor-general, his replacement, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, sacked the bishop. "The allegations against the governor-general have reached such critical mass that he should consider resigning before more damage is done to the office," the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in an editorial.
A spokeswoman for Dr Hollingworth said the governor-general had re-recorded an interview with the ABC in order to fully address the latest allegations, and would issue a statement today.