Scottish parish boycotts Mass after whistleblower priest is dismissed

The Tablet
September 13, 2013

Parishioners in Scotland have boycotted Mass and withheld their offertory donations in protest at their bishop's decision to remove a priest who publicly accused another cleric of sexual abuse.

Two hundred people in the parish of St Sophia's in Galston, Ayrshire, have signed a petition accusing the Bishop of Galloway, John Cunningham, of persecuting and ostracising Fr Patrick Lawson after he issued the priest with a decree of removal last week.

Fr Lawson, who is suffering from cancer, has campaigned for nearly two decades for the Scottish hierarchy to take action against Fr Paul Moore, a retired priest who, he alleges, abused altar boys and made sexual advances towards him when he was a seminarian in the mid-1990s.

The former Bishop of Galloway, Maurice Taylor, has said that Fr Moore confessed to him that he had abused children. He was then sent to a treatment centre in Canada. He was parish priest of St Quivox church in Prestwick in 1996. However, a church spokesman this week said that Fr Moore had denied making sexual advances to Fr Lawson.