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Transcript Produced by DTI 1 MS FURNESS: Your Honour and Commissioners, We Have 2 Dr Thomas Doyle Giving Evidence This Morning

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Transcript Produced by DTI 1 MS FURNESS: Your Honour and Commissioners, We Have 2 Dr Thomas Doyle Giving Evidence This Morning ROYAL COMMISSION INTO INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE Public Hearing - Case Study 50 (Day 243) Level 17, Governor Macquarie Tower 1 Farrer Place, Sydney On Tuesday, 7 February 2017 at 10am Before: The Chair: Justice Peter McClellan AM Before Commissioners: Justice Jennifer Ann Coate Mr Bob Atkinson AO APM Mr Robert Fitzgerald AM Professor Helen Milroy Mr Andrew Murray Counsel Assisting: Ms Gail Furness SC Mr Stephen Free .7/02/2017 (243) 24790 Transcript produced by DTI 1 MS FURNESS: Your Honour and Commissioners, we have 2 Dr Thomas Doyle giving evidence this morning. 3 4 <THOMAS PATRICK MICHAEL DOYLE, sworn: [10.07am] 5 6 <EXAMINATION BY MS FURNESS: 7 8 MS FURNESS: Your full name, Dr Doyle? 9 10 DR DOYLE: Good morning. 11 12 MS FURNESS: Would you tell us your full name? 13 14 DR DOYLE: My full name is Thomas Patrick Michael Doyle. 15 16 MS FURNESS: What current work are you doing in the 17 Catholic Church, doctor? 18 19 DR DOYLE: I don't do anything for the institutional 20 Catholic Church. The ministry, if you want to call it 21 that, that I do almost exclusively is in two areas. One is 22 with the victims and survivors, and their families, of 23 sexual abuse. There is a variety of things I do there. 24 I'm also a licensed addictions therapist, so I do some 25 work, not a great deal, with families who have children 26 that are into drugs back in my area. 27 28 MS FURNESS: Thank you. You entered the Dominican 29 novitiate in about 1964? 30 31 DR DOYLE: If you say so, I agree it. 32 33 MS FURNESS: If I say so based on your CV, would you agree 34 with the particulars? 35 36 DR DOYLE: It's probably - I think it is 1964. 37 38 MS FURNESS: Prior to entering that novitiate, did you 39 come from a religious family? 40 41 DR DOYLE: We were practising Catholics, but we weren't 42 churchy, so to speak. My father was a scientist and so 43 there was, I think, a healthy amount of scepticism and 44 realism in the family. We were not what would be 45 considered at that time to be a devout family. 46 47 MS FURNESS: What attracted you to the Dominicans? .7/02/2017 (243) 24791 T P M DOYLE Transcript produced by DTI 1 2 DR DOYLE: At that time, by the way, I just want to say 3 that the priesthood, back in the 1960s, was an honourable 4 profession and it was one that a lot of us thought about. 5 It had not been subjected to any significant criticism, at 6 least that most of us knew about. 7 8 So I was attracted to the Dominicans because I was 9 sort of thinking about becoming a priest and I had met some 10 and I was very impressed with two things about them: one, 11 they were very much down to earth and normal; and, two, 12 they did a lot of college educational work, research work, 13 and I was interested in that dimension. I wasn't too 14 interested in being a parish priest. 15 16 MS FURNESS: You took your vows in 1968? 17 18 DR DOYLE: Final vows in 1968. 19 20 MS FURNESS: What did you do after that? 21 22 DR DOYLE: In a religious order, most of them, you take 23 your vows during the course of your formation, but 24 ordination, if you are going to be a priest, takes place 25 separate from that. You have to have final vows, your 26 solemn vows, in order to be ordained, so I went back and 27 completed - actually, after 1968, I began my theological 28 studies and, at the end of those, I was ordained a priest. 29 30 MS FURNESS: And the theological studies you undertook 31 where? 32 33 DR DOYLE: I did my theology in Dubuque, Iowa. Our 34 seminary of theology was in Dubuque, Iowa and that's where 35 I did it. 36 37 MS FURNESS: You ultimately did a PhD in? 38 39 DR DOYLE: In canon law. 40 41 MS FURNESS: When was that? 42 43 DR DOYLE: I received my doctorate in 1978 from Catholic 44 University of America. 45 46 MS FURNESS: As you know, doctor, we'll be dealing with 47 canon law later and you will be joining us later for .7/02/2017 (243) 24792 T P M DOYLE Transcript produced by DTI 1 a discussion on canon law. 2 3 DR DOYLE: Yes, ma'am, I do. 4 5 MS FURNESS: Thank you. You refer to, in 1981, being 6 asked to serve as Secretary-Canonist at the Vatican Embassy 7 in Washington DC. 8 9 DR DOYLE: Yes. 10 11 MS FURNESS: How did that come about? 12 13 DR DOYLE: I at the time was working for the Archdiocese 14 of Chicago as a judge in their ecclesiastical tribunal, and 15 I was called by my superior, the Dominican Provincial, who 16 informed me that I would soon be receiving a telephone call 17 from the Papal Nuncio's office asking me to go out for an 18 interview, and he said, "If they offer you the job, take 19 it." They did and I did. 20 21 MS FURNESS: What was the job? 22 23 DR DOYLE: The job was to work at the Papal Nunciature in 24 Washington DC as a staff canonist, and my main duty was to 25 manage the process whereby candidates for the office of 26 bishop are investigated, whereby dioceses are created, 27 bishops are changed, transferred or retired. I handled all 28 of the administrative dimension of that. 29 30 MS FURNESS: What investigations did you do into potential 31 bishops? 32 33 DR DOYLE: We would get the names of potential bishops. 34 Let's say a bishop wants an auxiliary, an assistant, he 35 would send us three possible names and then we would look 36 in our own lists of candidates that were there, possible 37 candidates, and we would send out questionnaires, 38 confidential questionnaires, to about 20 or 25 people. 39 Some names were provided by the bishop, others that we 40 found, classmates, other people the candidates had worked 41 under. They would all come back. These were very 42 comprehensive questionnaires, several pages long, with 43 maybe 40 or 50 questions. 44 45 At that time, Pope John Paul II was the Pope and there 46 were several key questions that had to be answered 47 affirmatively. One was complete adherence to the Church's .7/02/2017 (243) 24793 T P M DOYLE Transcript produced by DTI 1 doctrine on sexual morality; complete adherence to the 2 Church's doctrine on marriage of priests, women priests and 3 homosexuality. If you didn't pass that, you didn't get any 4 further. 5 6 MS FURNESS: When you say "if you didn't pass that", do 7 you mean if somebody who was answering the survey indicated 8 that the auxiliary priest or potential auxiliary priest 9 didn't meet one or more of those criteria? 10 11 DR DOYLE: That's correct, exactly. And all of this was 12 done in deep secrecy. The recipients were given an 13 envelope that said, "Once you open this you are under the 14 pontifical secret and you cannot reveal the contents to 15 anyone." When they were done, they were to send the 16 envelope - everything we sent them, they had to send it 17 back, so there were no traces. But if they did reveal 18 that - I will just give you an example. One man wrote in 19 that he knew this candidate quite well, and they were 20 sitting in an airport waiting for a plane one day, and he 21 said, "We just got into a discussion and he said 'Don't you 22 think some day the Church is going to give official 23 approval to birth control?'" Well, that ended the 24 candidacy of that particular individual. 25 26 MS FURNESS: Was there any discretion in you as to whether 27 or not, given the other circumstances of the man's 28 candidature, he should still nevertheless be accepted? 29 30 DR DOYLE: The only discretion I had was when I would 31 discuss the results of the questionnaires coming in with 32 the Papal Nuncio. He would want to know how the 33 investigation was going and I would bring up certain issues 34 that had come up in some of the responses and we would 35 discuss them, and if I was able to convince him that there 36 were other factors here that were far more powerful and 37 would make him a really good bishop, other than a few of 38 these things which are just speculative and minor and are 39 not that important -- 40 41 MS FURNESS: Was part of the survey to ask whether there 42 were any complaints or anything else adverse known to the 43 potential bishop? 44 45 DR DOYLE: Yes, there were, and if something was mentioned 46 in the area of sexuality, we would generally try to verify 47 it to make sure that it wasn't a disgruntled somebody .7/02/2017 (243) 24794 T P M DOYLE Transcript produced by DTI 1 writing in to do the guy in, and we would have to verify it 2 with the bishop of the diocese that was requesting the 3 auxiliary bishop, for example.
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