Priest sent abroad was ‘hard to get on with’

The Irish priest believed to be one of Australia’s worst clerical child sex offenders was sent there from an Irish order because he was “a bit hard to get on with in ordinary life”, it has emerged.

Correspondence between a senior Redemptorist in Limerick and a bishop in New South Wales has been submitted to a special commission of inquiry into child sex abuse in the Church there.

The documentation, reported in The Australian newspaper, shows the Limerick provincial (head of the order) John Treacy wrote to the bishop of Maitland in 1949 asking if he would “take one of our students”, Denis McAlinden.

“You will very justly say then: ‘What is wrong with him, so why do you not wish to retain him?’ Well, his difficulty is community life... he is a bit hard to get on with in ordinary life. His temper is difficult,” The Australian quoted the letter as saying.

Fr Treacy recommended that McAlinden be placed in a secular priesthood “in which he will have to live in that close association”.

He later wrote to the bishop again, saying: “Poor fellow, he has wonderful qualities in many ways, but living in close community is not one of them.”

McAlinden is alleged to have abused children as young as four repeatedly over the four decades after his move in 1949.

Victims have given testimony of the abuse they suffered at his hands during the current inquiry. One said: “My parents died not knowing of the truth about McAlinden. They would have been so devastated if they were alive today and knew about my abuse and that so many other girls were abused over so many years. They trusted him.”

The commission was set up to investigate allegations of a senior police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, that the Catholic Church covered up crimes of paedophile priests, silenced investigations, and destroyed evidence. McAl-inden is one of the chief subjects of the investigation.

In 1992, he was acquitted of charges of indecent dealings with a 10 year-old girl in Western Australia. A year later he was removed from ministry. He died in 2005.