Philip Wilson

Philip Edward Wilson (2 October 1950 – 17 January 2021) was an Australian Roman Catholic prelate who was the eighth Archbishop of Adelaide from 2001 to 2018. He was President of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference from 2006 to 2010. From 1996 to 2001 Wilson was bishop of the Diocese of Wollongong, where he gained a reputation as a "healing bishop" for handling child-abuse scandals. In 2018 Wilson was at first convicted, but then acquitted on appeal, of failing to report in 2004 allegations of child sexual abuse against another priest when he was an assistant parish priest in East Maitland, New South Wales in 1976. After the conviction but before the acquittal, he resigned as archbishop and commenced serving his sentence under home detention. In September 2019 the fourth previously unreleased volume of the 2014 Special Commission of Enquiry into allegations of cover-up of sexual abuse claims in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle commissioned by Margaret Cuneen SC found that Archbishop Wilson was an "unsatisfactory and unimpressive witness" and that he gave evidence the commissioners considered to be "untruthful", "self serving and implausable". Early life Wilson was born in Cessnock, New South Wales, to Joan and John Wilson. He was the eldest of five children and received his primary and secondary education at St Patrick's Primary School in Cessnock and St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill. By his mid-teens, Wilson had decided to enter the priesthood, and on his completion of high school, at the age of 18, he entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly. In 1974, he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Catholic Institute of Sydney. Priesthood Following his ordination in 1975, Wilson's first posting was to the parish of East Maitland, New South Wales, where he served as an assistant priest. In 1977–78 he undertook studies in religious education in New York City. In 1978, he returned to Australia where he was appointed Director of Religious Education in the Diocese of Maitland (now the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle). After being appointed parish priest of Maitland in 1983, he was promoted to vicar general, Diocesan Management and Administration in 1987. From 1990 to 1995, Wilson studied canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he received a Licentiate of Canon Law, and was made a Prelate of Honour by Pope John Paul II.