A Catholic bishop has taken the rare step of writing to parishioners about a paedophile priest who is about to be released from jail.
Father Finian Egan, 81, is walking out of Sydney’s Long Bay prison on Tuesday.
He was sentenced in 2013 to eight years behind bars for rape and seven counts of indecent assault on young girls during the 1960s to 1980s.
Father Finian Egan (pictured in 2013) is being released from Sydney’s Long Bay jail on Tuesday after being jailed for the rape and indecent assault of young girls from 1961 to 1987
Paedophile priest Finian Egan was sentenced to eight years’ jail in 2013 for rape and seven counts of indecent assault on young girls in Sydney and the NSW Central Coast
Broken Bay Diocese Bishop Peter Comensoli has written to parishioners, in northern Sydney and the Central Coast, informing them he had banned Father Finian from even referring to himself as a former priest.
‘This development will occasion different reactions and emotions for many of you, even distress, especially for those who may have known Finian, and most particularly for those who have been offended against and hurt by him,’ he said in his letter.
The paedophile priest is also banned from exercising any priestly duties, living in an area where he was previously a minister of religion or attending any Catholic churches in the Broken Bay Diocese.
The State Parole Authority had allowed Father Finian to be released from jail, after serving four years of an eight-year sentence, because they considered him too old to reoffend.
Broken Bay Diocese Bishop Peter Comensoli has written to parishioners, in northern Sydney and the Central Coast, informing them of Finian Egan’s release from jail
Justice Peter McClellan on Thursday held the final sitting of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which ran for five years and cost $500 million
He was convicted of indecently assaulting three girls, aged between 10 and 17, between 1961 and 1987 while he worked as a priest at Leichhardt, in Sydney’s inner-west, Carlingford in the city’s north and at The Entrance on the Central Coast.
His release from jail comes only five days after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse held its final sitting in Sydney to mark the end of a five-year, $500 million investigation.