Through Tiffanie TurnbullBBC Information, Sydney21 February 2024Updated 33 mins agoImage supply, Getty ImagesAustralian bishop Christopher Saunders has been charged with rape and a string of ancient intercourse offences – some towards kids.The 74-year-old used to be arrested in Broome on Wednesday, after parallel investigations ordered via Western Australian police and the Pope.Mr Saunders has indicated he’s going to plead now not accountable to all fees towards him.He is without doubt one of the maximum senior Catholic clerics to stand fees of this nature.Mr Saunders is charged with two counts of rape, 14 counts of illegal and indecent attack, and 3 counts of indecently coping with a kid as an individual in authority. The alleged offending came about within the faraway Western Australian cities of Broome, Kununurra and the Aboriginal group of Kalumburu between 2008 and 2014.He used to be launched on bail on Thursday and ordered to live at his house till his subsequent listening to in June, the Australian Broadcasting Company reported.Apart from the overdue Cardinal George Pell, who used to be jailed after which acquitted, Mr Saunders is essentially the most senior Catholic legit within the nation to be charged with kid intercourse offences.In a commentary on Thursday, the Australian Catholic Bishops Convention promised to cooperate with police, and stated the fees towards Mr Saunders had been “very severe and deeply distressing, particularly for the ones making the ones allegations”.”It’s proper and right kind, and certainly vital, that each one such allegations be totally investigated,” Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe stated.First ordained in 1976, Mr Saunders has spent maximum of his profession within the faraway Kimberley area within the country’s north-west nook, and used to be appointed Bishop of Broome in 1996.The diocese stretches about 770,000 sq km (297,000 sq miles) – a space kind of the scale of Turkey – and encompasses one of the crucial maximum faraway portions of the rustic.Widely known for socialising, his advocacy paintings, and escorting younger males on tenting and fishing journeys, Mr Saunders has lengthy been a formidable determine inside the area people. He even has a lager named after him.The accusations had been first aired in 2020, however the preliminary police investigation that adopted used to be closed for free of charge.He voluntarily stood down because the Bishop of Broome in 2020, however stays an emeritus bishop.On the other hand after a ancient inquiry used to be ordered via the Pope, police started a brand new investigation. Just a handful of Vos Estis Lux Mundi inquiries had been undertaken all over the world. That means “You Are the Mild of the International” in Latin, Vos Estis investigations are commissioned via the pontiff and had been offered in 2019 to fight sexual abuse and take motion towards bishops and different high-ranking officers within the Catholic Church.
