A top-secret investigation ordered by the Pope into a former Australian bishop – the first of its kind in Australian history – has found he likely sexually assaulted four youths while potentially grooming another 67.
The bombshell 200-page report also found 73-year-old Christopher Saunders spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in church and charity funds grooming the young men.
7NEWS has exclusively obtained a copy of the final report handed to the Vatican for action by Pope Francis.
The report was completed in April and sent to Rome – yet six months on, no decision has been made on his future.
Only a pope can appoint a bishop – and only a pope can defrock one.
Since the acquittal of Cardinal George Pell in the High Court in 2020, Saunders is the highest-ranked Catholic in the country to face a sex crimes investigation.
It’s believed Saunders – the former Bishop of Broome – may be the highest-ranked official of any religion in Australia to face such serious accusations.
The report makes an astonishing number of findings against Saunders, who worked in the Broome diocese for almost 50 years.
“The Bishop has been variously described by witnesses as… a sexual predator that seeks to prey upon vulnerable Aboriginal men and boys,” the report states.
“During the investigation, four victims of sexual (delictual) acts were identified.”
“Sixty-seven additional Aboriginal boys and men were also identified as persons that may have been subjected to delictual acts or grooming behaviours by Bishop Saunders.”
It claims the alleged offences date back 50 years – when Saunders was newly ordained and working as a priest in Sydney.
“One additional man was identified through the Church’s National Redress Scheme as being an alleged victim of bishop Saunders while (he) was a parish priest at Clovelly in 1976,” the report added.
Saunders was ordained in 1976, later moving to the Kimberley region full-time. He became Bishop of Broome in 1996.
The report claims he developed a “modus operandi” of grooming vulnerable young Aboriginal males by plying them with alcohol, cash, phones, phone credit, hotels, air and bus travel.
It found he was spending up to $4000 a month on alcohol for the youths.
Saunders is also alleged to have had five bank accounts, which at one time held a total of $3 million. The safe in the chancery held $80,000 in cash.
He also collected multiple guns, bought a $70,000 boat and multiple cars.
The investigation was led by two former WA Police detectives with 60 years of service between them. They identified a total of 102 witnesses, and 30 were formally interviewed.
One former church worker claimed Saunders funded his lifestyle with money donated from around Australia, Broome’s local op shops and even from the Sunday service collection plates. The money was meant to go to Indigenous charitable causes.
One staffer called it “immoral and improper”.
The report also reveals Saunders used the church plane to transport alcohol to dry Aboriginal communities around the vast 770,000 square kilometre diocese.
Witnesses said slabs of Jim Beam and Coke would be hidden in hessian bags “at the bishop’s instructions to disguise the contents”.
Saunders voluntarily stood down in 2020 after 7NEWS broadcast a special report revealing he had been at the centre of an 18-month investigation by WA Police code-named “Operation White Plane”.
In May 2021, police and prosecutors announced they would not lay charges due to “insufficient evidence”.
Saunders resigned as Bishop of Broome three months later, but still holds his bishop title and entitlements.
The Vos Estis inquiry was launched by Pope Francis on September 27 last year.
The report also found that many members of the church community who stood up to Saunders over the years “have either lost their jobs, lost their faith, or suffered both psychological and reputational damage.”
The Papal inquiry is officially known as a Vos Estis Lux Mundi – Latin for “You Are the Light of the World”. It’s a policy championed by Pope Francis in 2019 to shine light into the darkest corners of the Catholic world.
It’s believed there have been at least seven Vox Estis inquiries worldwide – six in the United States – as well as this one in Australia.
The Catholic Church in Australia would not comment on the report, except to confirm the results of its investigation had been sent to the Vatican.