Transcripts of inquiry     

A SENIOR Catholic Church figure has blamed his counterparts in the Philippines for letting disgraced paedophile Denis McAlinden act as chaplain to a school with 7500 children from kindergarten onwards.

Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, told the Special Commission of Inquiry sitting in Newcastle yesterday that he was "absolutely staggered and utterly appalled" the Filipino authorities had allowed someone in McAlinden's position to work in their diocese.

Asked whether he knew if anyone from the Maitland-Newcastle diocese had told the Filipinos about McAlinden's offences, he said there was no need because McAlinden should not have been able to work "without his celebret".

Father Lucas said a celebret - pronounced "chelebret" - was a document signed and sealed by a bishop or religious superior stating the holder was a priest in good standing.

"I could never have foreseen in 1992 that any priest could work anywhere in the world without the local bishop checking him out," Father Lucas said.

Father Lucas, a trained lawyer who was instrumental in devising Australian Catholic protocols to deal with paedophile priests from 1988, has been identified in various Church documents as extracting a confession from McAlinden in the mid-1990s.

Despite this, Father Lucas said repeatedly that he had no recollection of meeting McAlinden.

A photograph of the disgraced priest - handed to him in the witness box - did not jog his memory. He said he did not go to the police about McAlinden at the time because the victims did not want the police involved.

He agreed it would have been best that the police were involved and the Church developed a policy of "anonymised" complaints to the police from 1996 or 1997.

When counsel assisting, Julia Lonergan, put it to Father Lucas that the "process" he had begun with McAlinden in 1993 - removing his "faculties" as a priest - had failed to stop him "acting" as a priest, he said: "In this instance it did."

This exchange finished a long-awaited first day of evidence from one of the nation's most high-profile Catholic clerics.

The inquiry has uncovered documents from as early as 1976 revealing diocesan knowledge of McAlinden's crimes dating back to the early 1950s, and the Church's failure to bring him to account over the decades is at the heart of the commission.

At the start of yesterday's proceedings, Father Lucas confirmed he had been a practising lawyer before joining the Church in 1975, and that he completed a number of further qualifications, including a Churchill Fellowship, while a priest.

He confirmed having a major role from the late 1980s in forming the Church's response to allegations of priestly paedophilia, working with Reverend John Usher, a trained psychologist who is now a Monsignor at the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Father Lucas said the protocol he helped develop was needed because Canon Law had become "unworkable" in dealing with the issue. He said he dealt with about 35 paedophile priests from 1990 until 1996 when the Church's Professional Standards Office took over the role, although he later disagreed with Ms Lonergan that the number of cases in the early 1990s amounted to "a flood".

The hearing continues today.