SYDNEY, Feb 20: Australian Governor-General Peter Hollingworth faced enormous pressure to resign on Wednesday over claims that as Archbishop of Brisbane he protected priests who sexually abused children.

Hollingworth, the first churchman to hold the vice-regal post, took the unprecedented step of defending his reputation in a television broadcast.

But the broadcast by the Queen’s representative to Australia only served to inflame those calling on him to stand aside.

With the cameras rolling, Hollingworth said he had kept on a young priest who sexually abused a 14-year-old girl because, he claimed, the relationship was consensual.

“There was no rape or anything like that, quite the contrary. My information is rather that it was the other way round,” Hollingworth said.

The girl was in a school boarding house that was supervised by the priest, who later became a bishop and was only sacked after Hollingworth left Brisbane to take up his current post in Canberra.

Prime Minister John Howard, who alone has the power to ask for the governor-general’s resignation, has left open the door for Hollingworth’s exit by noting he held the office “at Her Majesty’s pleasure”.

Queen Elizabeth 11, who appointed Hollingworth last year at the recommendation of Howard, arrives for a royal tour of Australia next week. Hollingworth is scheduled to meet the Queen later this week.

The allegations levelled against Hollingworth are serious and detailed and his shrill attempts to rebut them have embarrassed both the Howard government and the Anglican Church.

Hollingworth, during the decade he served as archbishop, is also said to have urged a headmaster of a boarding school not to resign over a case where a pupil had repeatedly been abused by a teacher who took his own life when the offence was exposed.

He is also accused of trying to discourage sex-abuse victims from going to the police and to have appointed to a Church Sexual Abuse Committee a choirmaster who was the subject of sexual abuse allegations.

Hollingworth has said he should be judged on his performance in his current job rather than on how well or badly he did his last one.

“The office of the governor-general stands on its own,” Hollingworth said. “I am the incumbent at the present moment. There is nothing I have done in the performance of my duties that anyone can say is damaging the office.”

But the calls for his resignation have mounted.—dpa