Pope Francis Visits the Pacific Islands, a Key Locale in the Vatican's Coverup of Sexual Abuse

Pope Francis traveled to Papua New Guinea this week, his first visit in three  decades to the Pacific islands, a locale that has played a little-known role in the clergy abuse scandal that has stained the Roman Catholic Church.  Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries moved to Papua New Guinea after they sexually abused children in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.

These men were part of a larger pattern of at least two dozen other priests and missionaries having left New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States for Pacific island countries such as Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa under similar circumstances.  In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew that those men had been accused or convicted of abuse before they transferred to the Pacific, shielding them from scrutiny back home.

It has been widely documented that the church has a long-standing practice of protecting scores of priests from authorities by shuffling them to other places, sometimes in other countries. But what sets these cases apart is the remoteness of the islands the men ended up in, making it harder for authorities to pursue them. The relocations also gave the men access to vulnerable communities where priests were considered beyond reproach.

Michelle Mulvihill, a former nun and adviser to the Australian Catholic Church, has long accused Catholic organizations of using the Pacific islands as a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.  “We’re moving pedophiles and pederasts into the poorest countries in the world,” Mulvihill said after being told of The New York Times’ findings. The church “used them to discard those people who they didn’t want to confront.”

In Fiji, one of the first public accusations of abuse against a priest or missionary was made in 2022. That was the case of Felix Fremlin, who said he was abused as a child by New Zealand missionaries working in Fiji. His father did not believe his accusations and, instead, beat him.  “If you say something against the church, it’s like saying something against God,” said Fremlin, who is now estranged from many family members and suffers from depression. Correspondence between his lawyer and Catholic officials shows that Fremlin reached a monetary settlement with the church.

Peter Loy Chong, the archbishop of Suva, the capital of Fiji, has claimed he had no records of abusive priests being moved to his archdiocese.  But such cases were possible, Mulvihill said, because of the way the church is organized. Many of the accused priests and brothers belonged to Catholic religious orders that are supposed to be supervised by their own superiors, and not by diocesan bishops and archbishops.

Twenty-two of these accused priests and missionaries were convicted of abuse, admitted to allegations or were considered credibly accused by their religious orders or dioceses. Four others died before the claims against them were made public. Three of the men, who denied allegations of abuse, were investigated by police but were not brought to trial because of health or mental fitness issues. Prosecutors charged three others who also denied accusations of abuse, but the first man died before trial, the second man’s case was stayed by a judge for procedural reasons and the third man’s case was stayed by a judge for reasons that are not clear. That priest’s diocese did not respond to questions. The remaining two priests, the ones now in Guam and New Zealand, deny the claims of abuse and have not faced charges from prosecutors.

Rev. Julian Fox taught in Catholic schools around Melbourne, in his native Australia, for decades after he was ordained. He rose to be the Australian head of his order, the Salesians of Don Bosco. But in 1999,  he moved to the small Pacific island nation of Fiji. About the same time, a former student accused the priest of rape.  Even as other accusations of abuse by Fox were reported to the Catholic church, church leaders did not require Fox to return to Australia.  They maintained that he was within his legal rights to stay in Fiji, which kept him out of the reach of Australian legal authorities. After spending several years in Fiji, Fox took an assignment at the Vatican, which further shield him from responding to the charges of abuse.

Fox only returned to Australia a decade after the initial accusation, after the church came to a private settlement with the victim.  Fox then faced allegations in court and was convicted in 2015 for abusing five children, some of whom he beat and violated with a pool cue, according to Australian media reports.

Frequently, church officials knew priests and missionaries had committed abuse before sending them to the Pacific.  In 1986, a couple went to a priest in Baltimore to talk about Brother William Morgan, an American missionary who had briefly returned from Papua New Guinea.  The couple said Morgan had touched their 4-year-old granddaughter with his penis and in the past had abused other children. A letter by the priest showed that Morgan later admitted that he had “fondled and touched” children several times while he was in Papua New Guinea. Despite his admission, Morgan’s superiors at the Society of the Divine Word, his religious order, sent him back to the island nation for five years.

In multiple cases, moving to the Pacific seemed to offer Catholic figures an escape.  In 1971, Brother Rodger Moloney was appointed by the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God, a Catholic order, as the leader of Marylands School in Christchurch, New Zealand. His job was to care for children with disabilities. Six years later, one person anonymously reported to the brother’s superior in Australia that Moloney had sexually abused a child.  Months later, he was transferred to serve in a pharmacy at the Vatican. He then moved to Papua New Guinea, where he worked in the 1980s and 1990s, and eventually to Australia.  Moloney was extradited to New Zealand in 2006, convicted of abusing five boys and sentenced to nearly three years in prison. He died in 2019.

In Fiji, Fremlin now coordinates a support network for survivors of clerical abuse, most of whom keep their experiences secret. All “have marriage problems, job problems,” he said. “Some are violent towards women, some have problems with drugs.”   He added: “Overseas, you’ve got specialists. Here in Fiji, we’ve got nobody. The only counseling we get is when we sit and talk with each other.”