Bishop Umbers steps aside, while denying abuse claim
“Bishop Umbers emphatically denies the allegation.”
A prominent Australian bishop has agreed to step aside from ministry, amid an investigation into a historical claim of abuse, which he has strongly denied.
The Archdiocese of Sydney said July 1 that it had received notice of a civil claim of historical abuse, with auxiliary Bishop Richard Umber identified as the claim’s subject.
“Bishop Umbers emphatically denies the allegation,” the archdiocese said, adding it had notified the authorities about the complaint.
The archdiocese noted that the New South Wales Police Force, which is responsible for law enforcement in Sydney, had confirmed there was no active investigation into the allegation.
“In conformity with the archdiocesan protocol for managing safeguarding complaints and relevant legislation, Bishop Umbers has agreed to stand aside from public ministry while this allegation is investigated,” the archdiocese said.
Umbers, a member of Opus Dei who was appointed as a Sydney auxiliary bishop in 2016, is known throughout the English-speaking world for his online presence, which has earned the 54-year-old the nickname “the meme bishop.”
Umbers was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1971. He trained for the priesthood at an Opus Dei seminary in Rome and studied at the city’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. He was ordained a priest in 2002 at Spain’s Torreciudad shrine.
Following his episcopal ordination in 2016, he represented Australia and New Zealand’s bishops at the International Eucharistic Congresses in Budapest in 2021 and Quito in 2024. He was granted Australian citizenship in April 2024.
Umbers’ decision to step aside recalls that of Bishop John Brungardt, the Bishop of Dodge City, Kansas, who took a voluntary leave of absence in 2021 while the Kansas Bureau of Investigation said it was looking into an abuse allegation against him.
Brungardt’s decision to step away largely broke with episcopal precedent, as several U.S. bishops had chosen previously to remain in active ministry while the Vatican conducted probes into allegations of sexual or administrative misconduct.
When the criminal investigation against Brungardt was announced, Archbishop Joseph Naumann was directed by the Vatican’s doctrinal dicastery to oversee a canonical probe under Vos estis lux mundi, the policy issued by Pope Francis in 2019 for investigating alleged abuse or administrative misconduct on the part of bishops.
Naumann was asked to lead the canonical investigation because he was the Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas, a metropolitan archdiocese whose suffragan dioceses include Dodge City.
Brungardt, who denied the allegation throughout the investigation, returned to ministry in 2022.
An abuse crisis has overshadowed the Catholic Church in Australia for decades, gaining public visibility in the 1990s.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which operated from 2013 to 2017, scrutinized the handling of abuse cases by the Catholic Church in Australia, offering detailed recommendations to the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
The commission’s other recommendations included the creation of a single national redress scheme, which was established in 2018.
If the body concludes there is a reasonable likelihood that the applicant is eligible for redress, it can offer the applicant counseling, a direct response from an institution, such as a church or school, and a payment. The National Redress Scheme can provide a maximum redress payment of 150,000 Australian dollars (around $98,000).
The abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in Australia has included high-profile legal cases.
Retired Bishop Christopher Saunders, who led the Diocese of Broome in Western Australia from 1995 to 2021, is currently facing sexual abuse and assault charges. He pleaded not guilty in September 2024 to 19 abuse charges.
Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, was convicted in 2018 of sexual abuse, but the conviction was overturned in 2020 by the High Court of Australia, after he had spent nearly two years in prison. Pell died in 2023, at the age of 81.
Interesting how bishops are treated. I am a broken record but the same finesse might be afforded priests falsely accused. The bishop gets the chance to step aside or take a leave. The priest is removed like a criminal,his reputation shattered,his life put on hold for however long the BISHOP determines and then a postage sized comment in the Catholic paper to say that he,the bishop has done all the correct things while Father dangles in the wind with no restitution of his name. Sounds Christ-like to me. To be clear,I strongly abhor abuse of any kind to children or vulnerable adults. I also abhor abuse of priests.