John Irving Fleming is an Australian priest and bioethicist. He was the founding president of Campion College. Fleming was originally an Anglican priest but later became a Roman Catholic priest. He is currently suspended from public ministry.
Fleming was a high-profile Anglo-Catholic priest in the Anglican Church of Australia's Adelaide diocese. He was ordained in 1970. He became a Roman Catholic in 1987. Although married with three children, he was given a papal dispensation permitting his ordination in the Catholic Church in 1995. As an Anglican priest in the early 1970s he served as university chaplain and priest in charge of St Paul's Church in Adelaide and dean and vice-master of St Mark's College at the University of Adelaide. Between 1977 and 1978 he was assistant curate at St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick, in West London; and between 1978 and 1987 was the rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Plympton. As a Roman Catholic lay person, between 1987 and 1995, he was the founding director of Southern Cross Bioethics Institute. As a Roman Catholic priest, Fleming was director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute between 1995 and 2004; and from 2001, a faculty member of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. He served as the founding president of Campion College between 2004 and 2009. He was an Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, until its closure in 2012. He has served on a number of bioethics boards including as a foundation member of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee ; and between 13 July 1996 and 13 July 2016, a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Fleming was a member of the SA Council on Reproductive Technology and a Member of the Gene Technology Ethics Committee set up under the Australian Gene Technology Act 2000. Fleming was a weekly columnist of The Advertiser in Adelaide and presented radio programs for a number of years. In 2005, while the president of Campion College in Sydney, Fleming hosted a short-lived talkback radio program on 2UE.
Fleming is married to Alison and they have three children.
Allegations of abuse
Subsequent to his appointment to Campion College, media reports were published alleging sexual impropriety by Fleming with a number of people when he was an Anglican priest. It was stated that the allegations were known to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, the Most Reverend Leonard Faulkner, at the time of his Roman Catholic ordination in 1995 and thus also at the time of his appointment to Campion College in 2004. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Adelaide reinstated Fleming as a priest in 2011 and he initiated a defamation case against the Sunday Mail in regard to a number of stories published on the complaints and investigations. In December 2012 the investigations into these allegations had not been finalised. The case commenced 7 October 2014. Between 2014 and 2016, he pursued a high profile, but unsuccessful, defamation action against The Advertiser and Sunday Mail in the Supreme Court of South Australia regarding reports of alleged sexual misconduct as an Anglican priest. On 24 February 2016, Fleming lost his defamation case against The Advertiser and Sunday Mail regarding articles alleging sexual misconduct. The Supreme Court of South Australia ruled 'the articles truthfully conveyed imputations that Fr Fleming was engaged in "sexual misconduct, predatory sexual behaviour, morally reprehensible and deceitful conduct, an immoral, adulterous, homosexual affair, hypocrisy, abuse of trust, moral cowardice and false denial of sexual involvement."' with costs awarded against him. Fleming appealed against the dismissal of the claim for damages for defamation to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia. On 29 September 2016 this appeal was unanimously dismissed when the Full Court found no errors of law were made in the earlier judgement. Costs were awarded against him. Fleming lodged an application for special leave to appeal with the High Court of Australia, the application was refused as it did 'not raise a question of general importance. None of the applicant's proposed appeal grounds enjoys sufficient prospects of success to warrant a grant of special leave. Special leave should be refused with costs.' It was decreed under canon law on 9 February 2017 by Philip Marshall, Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, that Fleming was to immediately cease all forms of ministry.
