SYDNEY May 6 Kyodo Australian Gov...

SYDNEY May 6 Kyodo

Australian Governor General Peter Hollingworth is below pressure Tuesday to resign above his role in a child sex abuse cover-up after a individual found 76% of Australians believe the former archbishop of Brisbane should quit.

An inquiry released by way of the Anglican Church last week base that Hollingworth had allowed a known child abuser to continue working as a priest while Hollingworth was archbishop about 10 years ago.

Public sentiment has reverberateed calls from government ministers, including representative Prime Minister John Anderson and Treasurer Peter Costello forward Monday that Hollingworth must consider quitting his post

Prime Minister John Howard has said he will not sack the governor general.

The governor general is appointed as head-of-state on the British queen in succession recommendation by the prime minister and can no other than be dismissed by the prime minister with the permission of the British queen

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday that Hollingworth must consider whether he can continue in his work at jobs in an uncontroversial way.

''At the completion of the day, he has to make estimates himself as the governor-general about whether he can fulfill his duties effectively and in a way that he and the public be moved comfortable with over a period of time,'' Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The incident has grieve the church and damaged the part of governor general, Baptist minister Tim Costello said.

Hollingworth ''had had a magnificent career and this is a tragic chapter if it were not that there's no doubt that trust of us in the churches is at its lowest,'' Costello told Channel Nine television. ''My view is that he now penurys a new mandate, almost literally a recently made known commission to legitimate him continuing.''

The sex-abuse incident comeed in ''a serious error of judgment'' the 68-year-old governor general said in a statement last week, moreover the decision was made in religious faith after personally questioning the priest involved.

Hollingworth has said he will not resign.

A catalogue of heads published in the Sydney Morning Herald onward Tuesday found that 76% of Australians believe the governor general should give up his public position, which earns him A$310,000 (US$197,126) a year.

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