Archbishop resists Cardiff witchhunt

By Simon Caldwell ARCHBISHOP John Ward uf Cardiff was this week resisting pressure to resign from office after he refuted claims that he knowingly ordained a "suspected paedophile" to the priesthood.
Calls for his resignation were made by The Daily Telegraph, the BBC and by a group of priests within his own diocese after Fr Joseph Jordan was sent to prison for eight years for indecent assaults against two mae-year-old boys last year and a 12-year-old boy in the late1980s. while he was a teacher in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
A jury at Cardiff Crown Court also found the priest guilty of making indecent photographs, and of intending to pervert the course of justice by trying to conceal the evidence. Jordan committed most of the offences within 18 months of being ordained at St Mary of the Angels Church in Canton, Cardiff, in 1998.
Archbishop Ward, 71, has since been accused of ignoring concerns raised by Bishop Christopher Budd of Plymouth, who had first accepted Jordan as a candidate for his diocese. Both Archbishop Ward and Bishop Budd knew that Jordan had been tried for indecent assault in 1990, in a case which took a jury at Sheffield Crown Court just 20 minutes to dismiss.
Archbishop Ward was also accused of failing to observe the Church's child protection guidelines, by ordaining II man previously accused of abuse. and by not notifying the diocesan child protection team of Jordan's earlier trial.
BBC's Panorama is now planning to screen a documentary on November 5, called Power to Abuse, which is expected to be scathingly critical of Archbishop Ward's handling of the Jordan case, as well as his treatment of John Lloyd, his former press officer who was sent to jail for eight years for crimes which included the rape of a 16-year-old girl.
Panorama, which has admitted being approached with the idea for the programme by a "couple of priests" from the Cardiff archdiocese, has even been asking members of the archbishop's Capuchin Franciscan order if they believe there was any truth in the false allegation made against him in 1999.
However, Archbishop Ward insisted he has "always acted with integrity" and said any talk of resignation would be a matter solely between himself and the Pope.
Jordan, 42, came highly recommended to him as a seminarian in 1995 after requesting a transfer from the Plymouth to Cardiff to be nearer to his elderly parents, who had lived in Newport, South Wales, and wished to return there.
At the time, Bishop Budd, who had drafted the Church's 1994 child protection guidelines, was aiming to look more closely at Jordan's past and advised Archbishop Ward to do the same.
The archbishop then subjected...
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