A POLICE officer will visit Peter Gogarty at his Vacy home next Monday, to tell the man sexually abused by pedophile priest Jim Fletcher if he faces a criminal charge for wearing a T-shirt at a Sydney protest bearing the words: "Benedict say sorry".
"It's a purple T-shirt, like bishop's purple, and when I asked a police officer over the phone if I'd be fined if I wore it during a protest, he had the decency to say 'I don't know'," he said.
"I was told a senior officer with the World Youth Day investigation team in Sydney is coming to see me on Monday to have a chat.
"They want to find out what kind of protest I'm planning so that nothing I do is deemed annoying to World Youth Day participants and I get charged and fined $5500."
The NSW Government has come under fire for laws introduced to prevent people "causing annoyance" to those taking part in World Youth Day events.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma said yesterday the laws were brought in following "advice" from the World Youth Day authority.
But World Youth Day 2008 chief operating officer Danny Casey said "the church did not ask for any special power to be given to police".
Mr Gogarty planned a peaceful protest with other sex abuse victims and supporters at Anzac Parade, Sydney, along Pope Benedict XVI's route to Randwick racecourse.
"We were going to wear our purple T-shirts, carry some posters calling on the Pope to apologise to victims of pedophile priests, and put 105 crosses along the route representing the 105 Catholic clergy who've been convicted of sexually abusing children over the past few years," he said.
"But we've been told Anzac Parade is one of the areas we can't do that."
Mr Gogarty, a former executive officer with Cessnock City Council, said he had never considered protesting before, but he was determined to have a say after silence to his requests for a papal apology.
"Stopping these protests says to me that this is still about protecting the image of the church, whose representatives devastated the lives of children, so they can manage the 'spin' of World Youth Day," he said.
Mr Gogarty said he was "genuinely moved and deeply grateful" to Maitland-Newcastle diocese Bishop Michael Malone who supported his right to protest.
"I'm sad that very few others in the church have had his courage," he said.
Mr Gogarty repeated his criticism of Archbishop Philip Wilson, a former Maitland-Newcastle priest who refused to publicly support a papal apology.